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To: Kerry Phineas who wrote (30979)	3/21/1998 8:50:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Respond to of 53903

Kerry, The great lesson on book value was the railroads. When they all went bankrupt, they had huge book values. The problem is, who is going to buy tens of thousands of miles of rail and skinny rights of way when trains had become uneconomic to operate? The answer was soon discovered. Nobody. yes, we all need iron in our diet, but not that much. -g- MB

To: Kerry Phineas who wrote (30979)	3/21/1998 9:08:00 PM
From: Ted The Technician	Respond to of 53903

Kerry, I use book value to loosely identify the short-term floor (e.g., the floor might be 0.8-1.5 times book value over the next quarter.) Your suggestion that "they couldn't sell a lot of the equipment on the books at their stated level" tells me that their "true book value" could be less than what I calculated. What's the value of all of its non-semiconductor parts? Difficult to answer, not of short-term importance because I don't see MU getting out of DRAM right now, and any answer today will be different than an answer tomorrow because there are too many parameters that can change on both the semiconductor and non-semiconductor side of the house. By the way, semiconductor memory was $283M, PC systems was $396.5M (63%), and contract manufacturing was $75.5M (63%) in sales last quarter. One might say only half of MU's business is semiconductor memories! You asked "what is the risk of their going bankrupt?" Low risk for the next two years (at $4 loss / year for two years, it would leave a book value of $14-$8=$6/shr) - but I won't be surprised to see the price drop. I can't see much farther than two years (some people might even argue that two years out is impossible given the speed that this business changes).