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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maxwell who wrote (28448)	2/12/1998 1:32:00 AM
From: Investor A	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572754

Maxwell, Have you heard the joke that the coming Intel i740 video chip is so hot (6W) that the heat sink and FAN are required to put on top of i740 to keep it cool? That's right! It comes from Intel! I could not help but wonder how the poor sole who installed 6 fans in his PII system could add another fan to cool the system if he decided to use i740?

To: Maxwell who wrote (28448)	2/12/1998 5:51:00 PM
From: Maverick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572754

RESEARCH ALERT - Merrill sees risk to chipmakers NEW YORK, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Merrill Lynch analyst Thomas Kurlak said on Wednesday the 30 percent rally in the semiconductor SOX index since December 15 has increased the risk of holding semiconductor stocks. -- "With no recovery expected anytime soon and December industry sales falling at the fastest rate this decade, we believe an earnings recovery is not imminent," he said in a research note. -- Unit growth has also deteriorated rapidly, he said. -- Believes this reflects slowing end market growth since chip inventories were already substantially depleted in the 1996 correction, he said. -- Kurlak said the worldwide semiconductor market contracted five percent in December from November and slowed to a 4.4 percent annual growth rate from 16 percent last August. -- "We estimate that based on current order data, worldwide sales growth will slow further and will go negative in January compared to a year ago," he said. -- Kurlak said he remains convinced worldwide weakness in the chip market reflects softening end markets in addition to overcapacity. -- Year-over-year unit shipments of integrated circuits shows rapid deceleration from last summer, from over 35 percent in July to over 21 percent in November, he said. -- "End market softness is driving prices of technology products downward," he said. "This trend reveals a growing oversupply of products ranging from disk drives to cell phones to network interface cards to PCs." -- Sees Intel Corp locked in a losing battle with its customers who want lower prices. -- Sees high probability of third year of down dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip prices. -- "In this stagnant environment we believe earnings will erode as costs grow due to the lag effect of new capacity additions still coming on," he said. ((Wall Street desk 212-859-1730))