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Technology Stocks : Micron Only Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mike iles who wrote (24529)	11/26/1997 11:17:00 AM
From: Thomas G. Busillo	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 53903

Steve Appleton is right. Look, forget the stock price of MU, but what Appleton says about the Koreans is right. You've got a situation of a foreign govt. pointing to a part of the electonics sector, calling it "strategic", bankers nodding their heads and throwing money at it without any serious regard for return, idiotic ignorance of competitive strategy on the part of foreign managers... And we've seen the results. Sorry, but companies that screw-up deserve to fail without the safety net of a government/banking "winky, winky". And the fact that the Asian players are crying over MU not squeezing the breeze on production when Hyundai, Samsung, and LG suspiciously all seem to time their production shutdowns at the same time (hey Commerce Dept. did you catch that one? Can anyone say "hmm...that looks like collusion" with the clear intent of driving up the cost of memory chips to American consumers?)...give me a break. It's called competition and although I'm still fuzzy on what the overall impact of MU's decision to fill in the supply did to overall prices, from a moral/ethical standpoint MU effectively saying FU to the Korean's shutdown should actually be applauded. I mean, Dongebu coming out and saying they were entering DRAM? How nuts is that? What, their hurdle rate is negative 15%? Guys, the way I learned it you want a positive IRR. If the IMF holds the cards, they should play as hardball as they can and take the proper precautions to insure real change. If the Koreans find it unpallatble, it's certainly their right to refuse, but it's certainly the IMF's right to insure that they're not throwing money down a rat hole. Look, I know some of you aren't big fans of MU/Appleton, but give the guy credit for going on CNBC and being pretty darn forthright about what the actions of foreign players are doing to MU - obviously they are hurting it. And speaking as a "manager" and not a "trader", I share his frustration. You've got a situation where a U.S. company and its management could have made every correct decision possible (for the sake of argument, let's assume they did) and the end result is that they end up getting crunched because most of the other players are totally clueless. Good trading, Tom

To: mike iles who wrote (24529)	11/26/1997 12:54:00 PM
From: Kathleen capps	Respond to of 53903

Mike, Thanks very much for taking the time to do the writeup and post it here. Kathleen

To: mike iles who wrote (24529)	11/27/1997 10:31:00 AM
From: Thomas G. Busillo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 53903

Mike, you may have started a scarey new trend, even for this thread - "Dylan on Micron" <g> Come to think of it, what if there was an analyst out there who instead of writing research reports and talking to his or her salesforce... ...actually sang it over the Squawk Box or released it on CD? There's a person I'd probably want to pay attention to. Could you imagine Tom Kurlak Sings? Or The Spice Girls Sing Tom Kurlak? Has MU ever come out an given an thorough explanation of their test issues? I mean, they were talking about bottlenecks back at the time of the last earnings release (which frankly, I mentally filed under "yeah, whatever; sounds like an excuse to me"; perhaps wrongly) so what's been happening in the intervening months? Is it that they can't secure the proper equipment for whatever step that's the problem? Or the equipment's there, but for some reason it can't be fit into the lines? * roughly 1/3 of capital spending this year will be for testers and the balance for wafer fab equipment which will be installed at Lehigh ... testing will start at Lehigh next March to relieve this production bottleneck Okay, so it seemed to be a problem late in the 4Q'97, August, but it's next March that the bottleneck gets relieved (on top of whatever contingency plans they've made, or hopefully have made, at existing fabs)...which puts them at the start of 3Q'98? What's causing them to take anywhere from 6-7 months to alleviate this problem? * plan to aggressively ramp 64 Mbit production during the next 2 quarters (last I saw 6 guys, led by Samsung and NEC were ahead of them in 64 production ... they are trying to catch up to the pack, another management decision that has put them in their current hole) Gee, wasn't it Tom Kurlak who predicted that MU would get 13% of the 64Mb market in 1998? As far as Lazlo and Chaplinsky go, yeah, overcapacity into the 2nd half of 1998 is likely, but if there is some sort of legitimate issue re: test equipment that isn't just MU-specific, strangely I think it's possible that in the early Spring you could see these test-related concerns come into play...and you get the potential for front-end overcapacity mixed with back-end bottlenecks at the very least causing some price stabilization... I don't know. If the problem in terms of the overall industry is related to the 100-Mhz products, and they won't reach critical mass until mid-1998, maybe it's totally a non-issue. But MU's not even there yet in terms of their ramp, which leads back to the "what's up with test problem?" I'm not an operations type, but if I'm running a company and my operations team comes to me with a capacity constraint issue that's going to hit my bottom line, I'm going to try and address it toute suite. And you'd have to think that would be MU's reaction as well...wouldn't you? So what's really up? Is it just lead-time from test equipment OEM + working it into the line (if possible)? In the short-term for MU... you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows<g> Good holidays, Tom

To: mike iles who wrote (24529)	11/30/1997 1:54:00 AM
From: Skeeter Bug	Respond to of 53903

mike, absolutely dismal report. i wonder what caused the decent price action this thanksgiving week ;-) hey, let's see, 3 months ago mu was going to make $4.50 in 1998. my goodness, the stories people will believe. lazlo is the good guy, right? he's the guy that downgraded before tk, right? i mean, tk sold his position, bought puts and then lazlo downgraded, right? ;-) well, maybe he's as good as they get. i'm a raging bull now. i said the analysts would be off by more than 200% a couple weeks ago. now they've lowered their estimates down to the skeet's range. ladies and gentlemen, boy and girls, oh, and the grim, this game is very easy. i'm no genious (ok, everyone, don't all rush and agree with me on this!). i use basic math principles to guesstimate mu's eps and i could train any 7 year old to do it - though training may not even be required. now you know why the analists can't get the job done until MANAGEMENT TELLS THEM. they don't pass the age test ;-) guess wha my basic principles tell me now? a q where dram starts at $3.10 is not likely to be better than a q where dram started at $5.60. next q is going to be nzzzzasty, ladies and gentlemen (the kids and grim were excused). HOWEVER, i'm intrigued by what is going to happen here. eps are due 12/16. options expiration is 12/19. is there a neat play given that nobody believes lazlo and this stock may be $25 going into this disaster? will tk pile on after eps are disasterous (shhhhh! the answer is yes - remember, buy really low is the next phase of this game!). will this drive down the weakest sister of all weak sisters? let's see. i'm ready to party, though :-)