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

To: Paul Engel who wrote (70207)	12/24/1998 1:39:00 PM
From: KM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

More Bruin Burgers for us? Happy Holidays everyone: Silicon Valley: The Last Remaining Intel Bears Dig In By Marcy Burstiner Staff Reporter 12/24/98 1:04 PM ET SAN FRANCISCO -- And then there were three. Thomas Kurlak, the Merrill Lynch analyst and mightiest of Intel (INTC:Nasdaq) bears, capitulated yesterday by upping his 1999 estimate on the chip bellwether to $4.25 a share from $3.60 and raised his price target to 144. Intel stood at 119 before Kurlak's move. The stock was trading up 3/4 today at 125 3/4. Kurlak was knocked down by gale-force winds that have buffeted Intel's stock up 60% since Oct. 8. But while endangered, the species known as the Intel bear isn't extinct yet. A few still sit huddling for protection in a world increasingly hostile to them and their views. Neither SG Cowen's Drew Peck nor Needham & Co.'s Tad LaFountain are wavering. Peck's rating on Intel is a hold, and LaFountain's is neutral. William Milton at Brown Brothers Harriman also has a neutral rating on the stock, but we couldn't get him on the phone to gauge the strength of his conviction. None of these firms, nor Merrill Lynch, is an underwriter for Intel. Peck and LaFountain remain unbowed after the upgrade by the high-profile Kurlak. "I'm mystified how people can so blindly go and recommend [Intel]," Peck says. He and LaFountain maintain that too many others are ignoring Intel's fundamentals. "I always heard you were supposed to buy low and sell high," says LaFountain. "My mistake was that I should have had a more favorable rating on Intel when it was trading at a lower price." The problem isn't so much Intel's business, which LaFountain calls "one of the greatest companies ever put together." The problem is future growth. To justify its current stock price, LaFountain says, Intel will need revenues to double from $30 billion next year to $60 billion in 2002, something he believes is impossible even given the company's cost-costing moves. Peck maintains that "I'm not going to put a buy rating on a stock without knowing how it will do in 1999." If Intel does see spectacular revenue growth, it will come from its Xeon chip for the high-end server market. "Without Xeon this company would be a basket case," Peck says. "They are charging $1,000 apiece for it. But it's a brand-new product serving a brand-new market about which we know nothing." Neither Peck nor LaFountain set price targets on stocks. An analyst makes a fool of himself if he raises his own price target once that price target has been reached, LaFountain says. If the analyst has done his job right, he should urge investors to sell once the target is reached: Unless the company has announced spectacular news, the fundamentals should no longer support the higher price. To LaFountain, this is like saying, "It has reached our objective. Oh, just kidding!" "I call it the American Bandstand ratings system -- it has a good beat, I can dance to it, so I give it an 85," LaFountain says. While he wasn't naming names, it's hard to listen to LaFountain and not think of the current Intel ax, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter analyst Mark Edelstone, who upped his target price from 110 to 120 on Nov. 10, then bumped it up again to 150 six weeks later. Like Kurlak, LaFountain has taken his shares of blows in the press. In its Dec. 21 issue, Fortune ran an article titled "Getting Intel Wrong" that called him a "small-fry analyst" who has held onto his hold rating since June. Intel's shares have nearly doubled since June. "I enjoyed that," LaFountain says, adding that he may indeed change his rating on Intel. "But my next move would be a sell, not a buy," he says. Of the herd that has issued Intel upgrades to buys and strong buys even as the stock topped 110, Peck only says, "Those who are making the call are in a fantasy land."

To: Paul Engel who wrote (70207)	12/24/1998 1:48:00 PM
From: David S.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Paul, I don't agree with you. The internet mania is largely individual investors who buy small stakes. They will get hurt, but it will take a long time in realizing that they are going nowhere but down or drifting. In other words, I think they will whimper out rather than blow up. I see the nets as turning into sleeping bears (constantly rolling over and pissing in his own fur) rather than battery-charged bunnies clanging down the racetrack and crashing into a wall. Regards, David S.

To: Paul Engel who wrote (70207)	12/26/1998 12:34:00 AM
From: Jake0302	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 186894

Regarding Internet Tulipmania: 1. Most of the trades in the net stocks are several hundred shares, that means small investors, and I think that means they will NOT run as a herd as everyone here suggests. Yes, there will be big intraday swings (eg, ubid, or pick your net stock. But the individual investor is a whole different creature than the institutional investor buying 10-100k share blocks. If THOSE GUYS start running for the exits in huge numbers, that will move markets much more quickly. 2. 8.7 billion into Mutual funds in the week ending Dec 25, compared with an average of 3.4 billion. That cash has to go somewhere, and, part of it will go into large, well capitalized, established hi tech companies, ie INTC, CSCO, MSFT, DELL, WCOM... that bounce may only last for a few weeks, but it is coming, and I think it will be substantial... DOW 9700, NASDAQ 2350... ? Comments?