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

To: Sam who wrote (74369)	12/12/2016 5:13:09 PM
From: Donald Wennerstrom	1 Recommendation Recommended By Return to Sender Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95738

An article on the merging of Micron and Inotera.

To: Sam who wrote (74369)	12/12/2016 8:14:16 PM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95738

Interesting article - the whole MU conference presentation is here: seekingalpha.com Dissecting his comments, it seems a bit hard to follow: -------------- Yes, so the Company has invested pretty heavily in controller technology. We acquired title systems a little over a year ago, and we’re very happy with the progress there. And in fact our clients and consumer base SSDs are generally now based on that title platform. And then we expect that that will continue to serve us and hopefully allow us to sort of move up the SSD continuum with that platform. For enterprise, we’re still going outside and partnering with others for that controller technology. So we feel relatively good about that, certainly much better than, for example, we felt a year or so ago. The Company demonstrated a commitment to that business by making those investments. So, we continue to believe that the storage business, particularly the data center and enterprise pieces, represent a very meaningful opportunity for gross margin enhancements. ------------ He seems to be saying they are using Tidal Systems controller platform for client and retail SSDs, but the attractive gross margin area is in enterprise? Enterprise is the area where they are still using external controller providers. If they have successfully internalized the client space - but not yet begun shipping product with their internal controller - I would think the client space would be the area where they can grab gross margin dollars in the near term, no? Client SSD controllers can carry a gross margin above 50%, so that would be attractive to MU, IF (that's a big IF) they can do it with the same gross margin as the external controller providers. My hunch is that MU cannot make the client controller with the same gross margin level as the external provider, since MU's track record here is limited and their volumes will be lower than the merchant controller makers, but who knows? The whole topic seems strange since MU is not currently shipping any known product which contains a Tidal System's or MU internal controller. Maybe he accidentally blurted out MU's future design road map (which is also odd coming from the CFO of a major company)? Who knows? Regardless, it's something to watch for in future product releases.