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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (47926)	2/16/1998 12:54:00 AM
From: Paul V.	Respond to of 186894

Threaders, Interest in Dorsey Wrights method of projections please find the below information. Paul V. Message 3440821 Sunday, Feb 15 1998 9:57PM EST Reply # of 692 To all. Your chance to ask Tom Dorsey... The President of Dorsey Wright and associates and recognized authority in Point and Figure charting, will be answering questions from you, Wednesday, February 18th. How are we going to do this? All questions submitted by 9:00pm (Pacific) Tuesday, February 17th. - Send your questions to me by the specified time. I will collect and organize for Tom. Please include in your post "For Tom Dorsey" so I know they are for him and not for me. If you do not want to post your question on the general thread by all means send me a private message. Ask as many questions as you like. Examples: Market trends, sector questions, stocks, news or whatever you can think of. Pretend you are calling to talk to him on CNBC. What would you ask there? - I will post all of the questions and answers in one post on the Point and Figure thread Wednesday evening. I know a lot of you are just learning and may feel self conscious about asking questions - Please don't! We are doing this to help you learn and understand the benefits of point and figure technical analysis as well as give some insights to the market. We do not consider any question ridiculous. It is to your benefit to take advantage of his expertise and knowledge. For those who may not know who Tom Dorsey is: Dorsey, Wright & Associates serves as the primary or supplementary technical research department for a number of firms, including a few of the largest brokerage houses and exchanges and professional management of equity portfolios for investors. Tom Dorsey is the author of "Point and Figure charting" awarded "Best Investment Book of the Year" by Traders almanac. He can also be seen on CNBC's stock talk once a month. Please join in, it should be fun and informative...

To: greenspirit who wrote (47926)	2/16/1998 9:18:00 AM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 186894

Thread, Article...Should Intel abandon flash? One of Andy Grove's greatest decisions was to take Intel out of DRAM. Why is he sticking stubbornly to flash memory? Sad memories By Jeffrey Young Forbes Feb 23,1998 GREAT COMPANIES have their bad spots. Intel has its flash memory business. Flash memory differs from the usual dynamic random access memory (DRAM) in that it doesn't lose its bits when the power is off. Flash is used in hosts of electronic devices, but usually in fairly small quantities. Your Pentium-chip computer, for example, has 2 to 4 megabits of flash memory to help it get its bearings as it is warming up. A flash memory chip in your cell phone keeps the phone's ID number and any programmed data. Digital cameras use large amounts of flash memory; that way you don't lose a photo when you replace the batteries. Overall, it's a $3 billion business. But it has been a lousy business recently. A few years ago the flash memory business had excellent profit margins and high prices. But the price of a 4-megabit flash memory chip has fallen from $15 to $4 over the last 18 months. Alan Niebel, a director with Phoenix, Ariz.-based market research firm Semico Research Corp., says the price could drop another dollar by year's end. With prices falling like that, estimates Jonathan Joseph, an analyst at NationsBanc Montgomery Securities, Intel may have lost more than $100 million selling maybe $850 million worth of flash memory last year. Intel Chief Executive Andrew Grove isn't throwing in the towel. The company has just committed to moving its newest flash memory production to Albuquerque, N.M.-at a cost of at least a billion dollars-instead of building it in Israel as had previously been planned. Intel claims that the move will help get new flash chips out the door faster. Using already fully depreciated U.S. plants also makes the flash business look better on the bottom line. Is Grove just being stubborn, sticking with a losing business? Ronald Smith, vice president and general manager of the Intel division that includes the flash memory operation, doesn't think so. He predicts that the small, portable electronic toys of the future will routinely use chip-based substitutes for hard disk memory. The tiny memory cards will go in cameras, personal organizers, pagers, set-top boxes and who knows what else. These cards will use lots and lots of flash memory. That way you can pull a card out of, say, a camera, then stuff it into a slot on a PC. "We're in the business to stay," says Smith. That will mean more losses. Just a drop spilled from Intel's $7 billion bucket of profits? Maybe, but Fujitsu, Atmel and Sharp are all eager players in flash chips, and the full impact of the Asian currency devaluation has yet to be seen. Moreover, Intel is no longer on the cutting edge in flash memory. Tiny SanDisk of Sunnyvale, Calif. beat Intel to the punch with a card that can store 80 megabits in a space the size of a quarter (the chip is being made by NEC among others). Advanced Micro Devices offers flash chips with lower power requirements than Intel's, a vital matter in portable appliances. While Intel still has the biggest market share, there are now at least 20 companies making flash memory chips, including Toshiba, SGS-Thomson, Samsung Electronics and Motorola. Thirteen years ago Intel made a dramatic decision to get out of DRAM-a product it invented-in favor of microprocessors. At the time it was an unpopular decision, but it turned out to be the correct one and helped propel Grove into the executive suite. Has Andy grown less willing to make that kind of hard decision? Or will events confirm the wisdom of his sticking to the business? ______________________________________________________________________ Regards, Michael