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Non-Tech : Kirk's Market Thoughts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kirk © who wrote (15430)	2/22/2023 9:49:28 PM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26583

Have you done real R&D with US based companies AND Asian based companies? My experience is old and possibly out of date, but culturally we get things done so much faster here because we question authority and "well, that is the way we always did it before" thinking. My understanding is Asian semi companies excel in capital equipment intensive spaces (foundry, memory) and US companies excel in design. AMD (desing) is US. TSMC (foundry) is Asian. In design, sure, some engineers can get some semi design software, and make a better chip. Fast and loose and free, wonderful! I don't think anyone can move quickly with $10 billion of capital equipment purchase, which is what foundry is. Where da factory go? Customers engaged and committed YEARS in advance. Some engineer wants to modify the process? Maybe in the next gen fab 3 years from now, sure. Running a factory is a lot different than designing a chip.. IF Gelsinger is correct.... Sure, if they succeed, they may be a good investment. It's a big if, and this is the risk I'm talking about. How can you have any confidence Intel will beat the dominant company in the foundry industry? I can't have any confidence in that. And why not just instead buy ADI, and own the top global company in analog semiconductors? No risk. I'd rather buy NGL - it's a large debt laden energy infrastructure MLP. All it has to do to go up 3x or 4x from where it's share price is today is stabilize it's balance sheet. If their business grows modestly (5% - 10% per year for a few years) it will be able to refinance its debt, and pay off it's preferred obligation, and get a market standard valuation for it's business, which would put it's currently $2.50 share price between $10 and $15. That is WAY easier to believe in (stabilizing it's balance sheet in three years) than Intel will be better at foundry than TSMC. Sorry, Intel no good Joe.

To: Kirk © who wrote (15430)	2/23/2023 10:29:44 AM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26583

US based companies AND Asian based companies? I was liaison with several asian companies for the purposes of building computers (not the actual chips in this case). One of the reasons I believe is that I gave unfiltered opinion, with some tact. The biggest problem we were having is that some equipment would arrive for final testing with obvious flaws, and it became apparent that the testing cycle was performed by junior engineers while the design was performed by senior engineers and the junior engineers culturally could not bring themselves to tell the seniors that they had made a mistake. Our solution turned out to be test results that were anonymous so that the designers didn't know whether the flaw was reported by someone in asia, a customer, or someone in the US. It wasn't a perfect solution but at least it got a quality feedback loop started. My coworkers used to say that I missed my calling by being an engineer. I should have been the conductor because I enjoy telling people where to get off.