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

To: William Epstein who wrote (7037)	3/9/1999 8:42:00 AM
From: EyeDrMike	Respond to of 7841

RESEARCH ALERT - Merrill raises rating on Maxtor Reuters, Monday, March 08, 1999 at 18:55 PALO ALTO, Calif., March 8 (Reuters) - Merrill Lynch & Co. on Monday raised its rating on the shares of computer disk drive maker Maxtor Corp. to intermediate-term buy from intermediate-term accumulate, citing strong demand for personal computers among other factors. Merrill analyst Robert Hansen also said concern over the disk-drive deal recently cut between Dell Computer Corp. (NASDAQ:DELL) and International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) has unduly hammered the shares of Maxtor (NASDAQ:MXTR) and others like Seagate Technology Inc. (NYSE:SEG) and Quantum Corp. (NASDAQ:QNTM) "We think the carnage in the prices of disk drive stocks is overdone," Hansen wrote in a Monday note to clients. He added that Maxtor stock has plunged more than 50 percent since hitting a 52-week high of $21.25 in late January. Hansen also said: -- he was comfortable with his first-quarter estimate of 17 cents a share on revenue of $697 million, largely because the company recently told him that first-quarter shipments were in line with expectations; -- he expected Maxtor's unit shipments to be "flat to up slightly sequentially (versus a mid-single digit seasonal decline for the industry)"; -- Maxtor was upgrading its disk drives with faster so-called GMR head technology and is ahead of its competitors in making the transition; -- channel inventories in the disk drive industry had decreased to three to four weeks, down from double digits a year ago; -- Maxtor's penetration of PC makers was growing, having signed up nine of the top 10; -- overall PC demand "remains healthy, albeit off to a slow start" in the first quarter; Maxtor shares closed up 44 cents at $9.19 on the Nasdaq. duncan.martell@reuters.com))