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Technology Stocks : Seagate Technology - Fundamentals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Duker who wrote (496)	1/29/1999 4:34:00 PM
From: Stitch	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1989

Folks, Another story from the press conf. in S'Pore: Friday January 29, 6:55 am Eastern Time Seagate to raise output with new drive By Jacqueline Wong SINGAPORE, Jan 29 (Reuters) - U.S. disk drive maker Seagate Technology Inc will be ramping up output from its Singapore plant as it starts production of a new drive for desktop computers this quarter, chief executive Stephen Luczo said on Friday. ''We will be launching the second generation of that product, again designed here in Singapore...in the next couple of months,'' Luczo, on a trip through Asia, told a news conference. The U4 product, with a capacity of 4.3 gigabytes and 5,400 rpm, was made for the sub-$1,000 personal computer market. Mike Stears, senior vice president of Asia Pacific drive operations, said ''very big volumes'' could be expected. ''I would say though that we will probably undergo one of the steepest ramps that we've ever done from a production standpoint,'' he added. Seagate executives said production would be increased and staff requirements were now being evaluated, but could not say if more production workers would be hired in Singapore as workers might be deployed from other locations. Stears would only say, ''We're increasing production and we're increasing requirements for people.'' Seagate, among the largest corporate employers in Singapore with about 14,000 workers, had cut about 1,800 jobs in the city-state early last year as part of a worldwide restructuring. Luczo said he was not worried that low cost segments of the computer market would hurt Seagate's margins. ''If we can deliver more technology cheaper, it's a good thing...the more people that have technology the more storage will get driven,'' he said. For the second quarter ended January 1, Seagate's net income jumped to $104 million compared with a loss of $183 million in the previous year. Its revenue rose to $1.80 billion from $1.67 billion for the same periods. Luczo said he expected Seagate's geographic revenues to remain largely unchanged. Europe accounted for 39 percent of the group's revenue, up from the 35 percent posted in the previous quarter. North America contributed 46 percent in the second quarter, down from the 50 percent contributed in the first quarter, while Pacific Rim revenues were 15 percent in each of the two quarters. On its Singapore operations, Luczo said Singapore had many advantages for Seagate such as technical resources, a strong engineering pool and a developed supplier base. ''This is the right place to do things and we don't see things changing,'' he said, adding Seagate was working on five or six initiatives with the Economic Development Board on how to maintain and increase its presence in Singapore. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------