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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: matherandlowell who wrote (93218)	7/18/2010 10:03:49 PM
From: Jon Koplik	2 Recommendations Respond to of 196559

Re : "They should have sopped up some of the stock in the low $30's" ...................... Well, since the price of QCOM shares has ALSO been in the low $30's recently (and after Q management authorized an additional $3 billion share repurchase), no one can say that they "missed their chance." (unless they bought nothing in the quarter to be reported on Wednesday.) Jon.

To: matherandlowell who wrote (93218)	7/19/2010 12:54:15 AM
From: slacker711	9 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196559

That's bad management? You are mixing apples and oranges here. Qualcomm's management has two different jobs. One is to generate the cash and the second is to manage the cash wisely. They have been brilliant at the first job and miserable at the second. If this management team was entirely responsible for the cash generation, I would give them a pass....but you could have a truly terrible management team and the strength of Qualcomm's business would allow them to still be a cash generating machine. The business is that good. I would also note that I wouldnt touch the QCT portion of management. OTOH, the management of the cash is entirely on them and I could live with the mistakes if they had shown even the smallest sign that they had learned any lessons from previous write downs. Can you point me to any lessons that they have learned from the billions in shareholder money that they have thrown down the tubes over the years? They continue to think that Qualcomm should act as an operator and they continue to act as a fund of funds. I know you trust management. However, try and separate the two jobs. What makes you trust Qualcomm as an operator or as a fund of funds? Are you comfortable knowing that Qualcomm had ~$800 million in mortgage securities or $2 billion in the equity markets? and if so, why? What gives you confidence that they will turn MediaFLO around when they have so misjudged the mobileTV market over the last three years? Slacker

To: matherandlowell who wrote (93218)	7/19/2010 12:56:48 AM
From: slacker711	5 Recommendations Respond to of 196559

I suppose that they felt that the health of the company demanded an increased cash position. The health of the company was never in danger. The two core businesses of Qualcomm continued to throw off huge amounts of cash even during the worst of the downturn. The only reason that was disguised from the market was that Qualcomm was busy writing down the value of all of their previous investments and the fact that they had to take the obscene settlement with Broadcom. Slacker

To: matherandlowell who wrote (93218)	7/19/2010 9:52:03 AM
From: ihavenoidea	8 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196559

Let me offer a single voice of dissent here You can't kid a kidder. There's plenty of shareholders on this board that still steadfastly support this management team. At least I would like to give you credit for putting forth rationale for that support. I didn't know Q doubled their cash in that period. Which scares me even more about this management team. Thus, Q's cash should have at least tripled to $30B; if it had been managed correctly-or at least be $25B. I don't need to outline all the sour investments that has dragged the cash down from $30B to $20B: but these come quickly to mind: Qualcomm Ventures, which started a $500M investment fund. I don't even know if QVI is around anymore.Certainly the investments have no significant ROI.Other investments: Snaptrack, that's a billion, Globastar-who knows, Broadcomm - that's a billion when u add the settlement and legal fees together, Triginex which Q bought in 2004, and at the end of last year announced that the last 45 engineers remaining in the company were being made "redundent"; Q chat - Sprint announced at the end of last year that no new Q-chat handsets were on the product development map; Media-flow-sunk costs certainly over a billion now (but given a chance for some return on the principal); mirasol -altho the jury is out, I don't give it much chance to be profitable for years to come; reduced royalty rates negotiated by the management team-billions; excessive compensation to sr. management in the form of salary, bonus, stock grants and options-hundreds of millions, excessive IR&D expenditures, etc. ......this should be enough to get me a few more "ignores". Actually the best I can hope for is that Q goes back to its roots,spins off QCT & QLT to a suitor with a capable management team and lets QWI and QSI stay behind with Dr. Paul Jacobs and a few billion with which to play. Qualcomm and its management were extremely effective when they were a small-even a mid-cap company. Now they are a mature company, bureacratically run, desperately needing a transfusion (divestiture), or at least new blood (spin-off). There is absolutely no way the Qualcomm board headed by Jacobs and run by both Jacobs are going to replace Dr. Paul Jacobs and his management team. It's very difficult for a father to admit his mistakes. Irvin maybe defied the laws of physics, but he can't overcome the mistakes of human nature. i.