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Technology Stocks : Semi Equipment Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Donald Wennerstrom who wrote (61034)	8/11/2013 11:44:41 AM
From: Donald Wennerstrom	2 Recommendations Recommended By Kirk © Return to Sender Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95574

This table addresses the yearly earnings estimates and actuals as well as repeating the quarterly numbers of the previous post. Looking at the yearly earnings actuals and estimates at the bottom line, 2010 had the highest actuals with 2011 close behind. The actuals for 2012 show a 9.9 percent decrease from 2011. The estimated earnings for this year ending in December show an even bigger drop of -19.1 percent compared to 2012. The really big news is the projected increase for 2014 of 45.6 percent compared to 2013. If that happens, the number for 2014 would finally get the earnings back to the levels of 2010/11. This outlook is one of the reasons(but not the only one) stock prices and the SOX have done so well since the last bottom in Nov 2012. Of course these numbers will change as we move forward in time, but as previous posts have shown, the relative earnings estimate numbers for the past few months have not changed all that much. The key is, how well will the 2014 estimates hold up as the next few weeks and months pass. Will these estimates hold their ground, or will they push out to a new time frame as they have been doing for the past couple of years?

To: Donald Wennerstrom who wrote (61034)	8/11/2013 1:42:03 PM
From: Sam	2 Recommendations Recommended By Donald Wennerstrom seminole Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95574

As the chart shows, SNDK was the standout this quarter with the greatest contribution to earnings of the 24 stocks as well as the exceeding their estimate by the most amount. Of the 7.43 total, SNDK contributed 1.21(16.3%). Don, IMHO this is not a random occurrence, any more than MU being the "standout" contributor to earnings in the latest week. Memory chip stocks have been given no respect for years now, essentially since the blowout in 2000-2001. But in the past, first Japan, then Korea and then Taiwan targeted memory as an area of special focus, essentially subsidizing over-investment as a part of government policy. Those times are done now, and many bankruptcies and mergers later, we are down to just 3 DRAM companies of any size and 4 NAND companies (counting Toshiba-Sandisk as one here). Despite the PC business being in the doldrums, PC DRAM actually has a healthy supply-demand balance and is now profitable for Micron because so much capacity has either been shuttered or been diverted to mobile DRAM. Mobile DRAM is still seeing tight supply despite that extra capacity because, while high end smartphones are reportedly slowing down from previously unsustainable levels of growth (although still growing at greater than 30% rates!), lower and medium end smartphone rates of growth continue to be torrid. This also drives NAND growth, but the biggest driver this year and for the next 5 years or more will SSDs, both enterprise and client SSDs. They have finally reached a price point where they are affordable by more people than just geeks and first adopters, and even though they are still more expensive than HDs, anyone who wants performance will opt for an SSD as their primary drive. If individuals need more space than 256GB, they can always buy an external HD quite cheaply. Next year, I think we will see enough NAND capacity as well as low enough prices to allow more (perhaps all) PC companies to follow Apple's lead and make SSDs standard in many of their models. I could go into this at more length, but won't bore you. My bottom line-- Memory stocks like Sandisk and Micron will outperform other chips stocks over the next 3 or 4 years, even though they have already outperformed this year.