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

To: Valueman who wrote (8777)	2/23/1998 1:44:00 PM
From: Ramsey Su	Respond to of 152472

Valueman, while Europe is looking for a political solution to 3G, hoping to eventually ram it down the world's throat, US is looking for a market solution. while Europe is fighting political battles with 18 layers of bureaucracies, US (and Canada) is busy working on the technology. By the time some type of standard is finally adopted in Europe, we may be deploying already. Oh no, Maurice, am I getting into your neo geo creo political platforms? Ramsey

To: Valueman who wrote (8777)	2/23/1998 1:57:00 PM
From: Qualopec	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 152472

Latest Individual Investor analysis: Won't turn around this fiscal year; Holdÿ(2/23) Having digested the flurry of bad news released by Qualcomm on February 5, we are taking an increasingly cautious stance on the company's outlook for 1998. As a refresher, the company pre-announced that three different operational issues--sales in Korea, sales of the company's digital handsets, and sales of its proprietary chips--were all showing signs of a slowdown. At the time, the company stressed that the impact would be felt through the end of the second quarter (ended March). Determining an outlook for the second half was extremely difficult. Further discussions with the company and other analysts, however, seem to indicate that the company will feel the ill-effects of the sales slowdowns for the remainder of the fiscal year. Industry and economic conditions beyond the company's control are unlikely to turn around quickly. In Korea, the economy is stabilizing and a depression-style meltdown no longer appears likely. But a recession will be probably ensue as the country shakes out excesses that built up during the recent era of heady growth. Demand for digital handsets, very much a luxury item, are bound to be hit especially hard. In addition, the high-end digital handsets that the company sells were expected to provide very high gross margins. Not only is softening demand impacting margins, but the reduced input in the sales mix is dragging down overall gross margin assumptions for the company. One of our original theses for Qualcomm was that the company was on the verge of an expected sales explosion in five distinct high-margin businesses. Currently, the outlook for both sales and margins is seriously worse. Over the next few quarters, we now believe that the sales and margin outlook could be further dampened. As a result, we are reducing our rating to Hold, noting that the company is still well-positioned in the very dynamic wireless communications market. We conclude that Qualcomm will be dead money for at least the next several quarters and could even drift lower as the company revises its guidance downward. (Posted 2/23/98 with QCOM trading at $47.69)