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Technology Stocks : IDTI - an IC Play on Growth Markets -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stu E. who wrote (9837)	11/10/1998 7:48:00 AM
From: Jim Oravetz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11555

IMHO. IDT shares are rising due to the rise in many other semi co's price and not anything IDT specific. There have been some recent articles in the trade pub's about the start of a "turnaround" in semiconductor sales. The clouds have started to lift on most semi mfgr co's, but I'm not too sure about IDT. The purchase of Quality adds some new products (clock chips) to their lineup, but nothing that overall, is noteworthy. As far as the stock repurchase, they bought less than 10% of what they announced as a target. With so many write-downs already taken (on paper), I do not think they really had the cash to buy more than the 900K shares, even at $5 ea. They still need to fund Centuar and Clearlogic development efforts. Also, continued funding of Oregon fab may be required -- even with excess capacity. Some notes in the annual report indicate that IDT purchased equipment, then sold it to a leasing co. Now they still have to pay to keep it there, even if it is underutilized. Bottom line is that IDT will benefit from an upturn in the semi industry sales -- they do have some good products. They are moving away from a large % dependence on SRAM sales, although many still view them as strictly an SRAM co. But until they can get a uP that competes with Intel/AMD in the MHz area, they will be laggards and a likely takeover target. Just my 2 cents. JimO