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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cirruslvr who wrote (51775)	3/7/1999 12:20:00 AM
From: RDM	Respond to of 1573214

<This is a good insight into Wall Street gossip about semiconductor analysts> thestreet.com Meanwhile Intel investors are still waiting to hear from Merrill Lynch analyst Joseph Osha, who has worked by Kurlak's side for four years and who took over Merrill's Intel coverage Feb. 22. Beyond emphasizing that he's not Kurlak, Osha has given no hint whether his outlook on Intel is positive or negative. "I have my own style that I've developed over time," he says. "It's not for me to do the job like Kurlak did." Reports from Kurlak and Edelstone had been must-reads in the semiconductor sector for some time. Kurlak's departure left a contrarian void. "It's really hard to come up with a strong No. 2," say longtime Intel shareholder Ted Bridges, a money manager of Bridges Investment Counsel, which manages $1.3 billion in funds. Bridges continued to monitor Kurlak's reports months after it seemed the Merrill analyst's insight had gone cold. "[BancBoston Robertson Stephens analyst] Dan Niles is very, very sharp ... but then again, maybe I'm just saying that because I've seen his face on TV for three days straight," Bridges says. (Niles, who has a buy rating on Intel received widespread press attention last week for warnings he made about Dell (DELL:Nasdaq)). Bridges says he still follows Edelstone but has been turning increasingly to research generated in-house. The true test of an analyst's influence on the market is the ability to move a stock with every report. Consider that when Kurlak cut his 1999 earnings estimate on Intel Feb. 4, the stock dropped 6.2% that day, compared with a 1.9% drop in the S&P 500. In comparison, on Boucher's downgrade Monday, the stock dropped 2.4% for the day, a negligible change from the S&P. On Joseph's Tuesday downgrade, the stock dropped 6% on a day the S&P 500 dropped less than 1%. Of the analysts who remain bullish on the stock, only two seem to have the clout to match Edelstone. When James Barlage of Lehman Brothers raised his price target from 135 to 180 Jan. 11, Intel stock jumped 8% that day, a day when the S&P 500 fell 1%. And when Piper Jaffray's Ashok Kumar raised his earnings estimate on Intel Jan. 6, the stock rose 5% that day, three percentage points better than the S&P. Edelstone last revised his outlook on Intel Jan. 25, by upgrading his earnings estimate, and this helped lift the stock 5% on a day when the S&P rose about 2%.