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Technology Stocks : Micron Only Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Carl Held who wrote (41783)	12/30/1998 5:20:00 AM
From: SlowThinker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 53903

>"Company's cost per megabit of semiconductor memory sold remained >unchanged", quoted from the earnings report. >...I'm going by the facts, not the speculations. But I'm assuming, Carl, that you are not implying that their costs stay constant forever...safe assumption? Given Micron's track record in aggressively shrinking die size and their aggressive process migration to .18 micron, I have a hard time seeing how their costs are not going to go down significantly in the mid-term future. While I don't doubt that the quote from the earnings report was accurate _at the time written_, it does not say when the earlier comparison point in time was. Regardless, I find it extremely hard to believe that their DRAM costs would have remained constant over a 3 to 6 month time period. Agreed? What I was saying in my earlier post was not pointed toward what the 1 week or 1 month or even 3 month outlook was for the company. I was trying to focus on big picture, >6-12 month macro factors that should be driving the long-term competitiveness and industry position of the company. I still stand by my earlier comments but would welcome a discussion on those topics. Did you have a serious disagreement with any of the assumptions I put forth on that basis, Carl?--i.e., DRAM usage growth rates, Micron share and share growth within the industry, indefinite postponement and/or cancellation of fab expansions by Micron competitors, etc. Regards,

To: Carl Held who wrote (41783)	12/30/1998 8:50:00 PM
From: Carl R.	Respond to of 53903

Carl, per your quote "Company's cost per megabit of semiconductor memory sold remained unchanged" You conveniently neglected to mention that costs per megabit remained unchanged despite adding in the high cost production from TI. Thus MU significantly reduced the cost in Boise, and reduced it enough to offset the high cost production from TI, which was a surprising achievement. Furthermore MU stated in the conference call that the full benefits of the shrink to .18µ were just being felt at the very end of the quarter. They also stated that costs at the TI fabs will begin to drop this quarter as they move the TI fabs to .25µ prior to the move to .18µ later this year. The conclusion that you can draw from this is that MUs costs per megabit will be down significantly this quarter, and will continue to fall as the year goes on. Now the mystery is will memory prices fall as fast as costs (or faster). But don't mis-state the facts - MU is making significant progress at cost reductions. These are the real facts. Carl