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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Factfinder who wrote (3090)4/27/1998 6:22:00 PM
From: Frodo Baxter  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 9256
 
IMHO, pretty pathetic WDC cc. Useful stuff:

- 5.2 mln units, 160 ASP
- enterprise cool, desktop sucks and clustered around low capacity points to boot (silly wabbit, that's what happens when you're late on the technology curve)
- next quarter, expect flat units, flat to slightly up revs and ASP
- booked 13.7 mln tax credit; no credit next Q
- assuming above and flat Q, that means they're guiding -.67 next Q (consensus is -.30)
- 2.1 time to market, but late in qualing; 2.8 in quals at 4 OEMs and in volume this Q
- as I expected, channel inventory down only slightly (last quarter was 8 wks)
- happy with their 3 major heads suppliers: IBM, TDK/SAE, RDRT... hmmm...
- yummy convert deal... $460 (!!!) mln (obviously, 15% overallotment) worth 19.4 (!!!) mln shares... that's $23.70 each.
- LT debt 513 mln. 53 mln must been from BankBoston credit facility. debt/equity is now around 1.05. used to be 0, you know.
- "What are you going to do about Asian dumping" "Well, it's not just the Asians..." "What are you going to do?" "We'll whine about it." "Will it work, like with Micron?" "No. Since our drives aren't actually made in the U.S.A., the U.S. govt doesn't give a damn." <note: not actually quotes, just my cynical, oversimplified attempt to capture the gist>

They didn't sound depressed, but gosh, with those uglies, they really should have been.