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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Incorporated (QCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dougjn who wrote (6463)	12/14/1997 8:12:00 PM
From: kech	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Hi Doug- Did you see M. Allard's post #6055? He claims $350 million in contracts last quarter - I haven't added it up but I assume he is right. Agreed- these aren't profits but it looks like soon there will be something there. Also just saw this interesting article on S. Korea. The claim is that after election on 18th the markets will stabilize. Probably already some expectation of that creeping in. In addition, IMF freed up $3.6 billion for Thursday. I am hoping that once the fear Korean insolvency or debt repudiation stops, even if the Korean economy doesnt' improve for a long time, the financial markets and QCOM stock price will move back up. On CSCO I think they are dead meat as layer 3 switching cuts into their Router Monopoly. They are currently charging twice the price for their Catalyst 5000 than Bay for switching (and COMS and CS for that matter) and that won't hold up once the router monopoly fades. Of course I have thought this for about a year and it hasn't happend yet.:< I am as fond of CSCO as QPUP is for Bill G. Actually, since I am in COMS I am more annoyed by Intel's attempts to get into NIC cards than CSCO which at least is maintaining a nice fat price umbrella under which others can survive nicely. S.Korea vote could improve negative sentiment Reuters, Sunday, December 14, 1997 at 03:08 By Robin Bulman SEOUL, Dec 14 (Reuters) - The strong psychological component fuelling South Korea's financial meltdown could begin to improve from December 18, the day voters choose a new president and the International Monetary Fund releases another $3.6 billion in rescue funds. South Korea's rough-and-tumble brand of politics has been staged during what Finance Minister Lim Chang-yuel has called the "confidence crisis." That confidence apparently has been undermined as international investors, hanging on the candidates' every word from their chairs in London and New York, tried to figure out what it all meant for the next president's commitment to much-needed industrial reforms. They didn't like what they heard, especially from Kim Dae-jung of the National Congress for New Politics, who took out newspaper advertisements vowing to reopen talks on some points of the IMF bail-out. But in a Saturday meeting over tea with President Kim Young-sam, Kim Dae-jung, Lee Hoi-chang of the governing Grand National Party and Rhee In-je of the New Party by the People appeared to settle the matter by publicly pledging to uphold the country's IMF obligations. Kim Dae-jung also wrote a letter to IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus saying he would introduce the necessary reforms. "Foreign financial institutions are in the mood to wait until the election," Finance Minister Lim said during a televised panel discussion on Sunday morning. "I believe that with yesterday's agreement by the candidates our credibility with global financial institutions was raised." Once foreign investors regain some confidence in South Korea, they could pour huge sums of desperately needed foreign exchange into the country's stock and bond markets. South Korea from December 11 raised the aggregate and individual foreign shareholding limits in specific stocks to 50 percent from the previous 26 and seven percent. It also advanced to December 12 the timetable for allowing foreign investment in the bond market, including benchmark three-year guaranteed corporate bonds. Confidence could restore stability to the battered won, which is a prerequisite to lure foreign investment back to financial markets, analysts said. The won has lost half of its value against the U.S. dollar so far this year in a bloodbath that saw the currency fall by its maximum daily 10 percent for four consecutive days last week. Also on December 18, the IMF will decide whether to release another $3.6 billion of South Korea's $57 billion rescue package. There has been increasing speculation among analysts and economists that South Korea would need closer to $100 billion to eliminate the risk of default, but Camdessus said the bail-out would be enough. "We believe that the financing is sufficient," Camdessus said in a television interview broadcast in Washington on December 12. He also said South Korea was keeping its promises to the IMF. "The government of Korea is delivering what it has pledged," Camdessus said. But he said the rescue deal, the IMF's largest to date, could not solve the country's problems overnight. "The package is there for restoring confidence over time and to help the country to fix its economy. You do not do that overnight," he said. For South Korea, every new release of funds by the IMF is a potential confidence booster for international and domestic investors alike. The IMF structures its rescues to reward countries for doing the right thing, meaning that it stops supplying money to countries that do not comply with the IMF programme. In addition to opening the stock and bond markets wider, South Korea has promised to adopt long-awaited financial reform legislation. An extraordinary session of the parliament is expected to be convened on December 22 for that purpose. The government also has moved to suspend operations of nearly half of the country's merchant banks, whose poor lending practices were blamed in part for setting off the crisis. Fourteen merchant banks have been suspended so far and the government has said they will not be allowed to reopen unless they come up with a good plan to improve their operations. Finance Minister Lim said on Sunday the IMF had given high marks to South Korea's efforts so far. "We don't have any differences of opinion with the IMF," he said.