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

To: patrick tang who wrote (17660)	4/3/1999 12:31:00 PM
From: Jock Hutchinson	Respond to of 25814

Patrick: Once again, at some level I disagree. I don't think that the upgrade from Edelstone is reflective of his actual knowledge of what this quarter's specific earnings will be, but rather the fact that the forward look is better, and quite frankly, that is available to any investor who does his homework. By contrast, there was clear selling with insider knowledge this past August on the afternoon before the preannouncement. However, it is very possible that this supposed insider knowledge was generated from outside the company such as someone knowing that LSI had booked a conference call reservation for the next morning. Analysts know what sequential questions to ask and how to get answers without asking direct questions. Analysts have also been dead wrong with LSI on numerous occasions-- Drew Peck of Cowen and Company just before the debacle of October '97 comes to mind. Like many posters, I have a lot of very bright friends in very high places including family members, and I am constantly amazed at just how stupid some of these supposedly brilliant people are. The only thing that makes them bright is the fact that they are a lot brighter than most of the population, but they still need to occasionally cogitate on the mechanics of tieing their shoes. One of my core rules of life is that even the brightest of people are stupid in many ways. A look at the body mechanics of Bill Gates illustrates my point. Moreover the "specialty chip" market is recovering as witnessed by the comeback of ALTR, etc. What still remains to be seen is whether LSI will outpace this market--i.e. will the "custom made hard wired" product that LSI markets outpace the "ready to install" market that ALTR represents? Will the "with fab" LSI outpace the numerous competitors in the ASIC business who are "without fab". Or will LSI merely keep pace with the growing semi market during this cycle? The fact is that LSI has never really gotten the chance to strut its stuff as a "system on a chip" company during an upturn in the semi market. Indeed, to some extent, true system on a chip is just now becoming available. Thus, despite the fact that LSI's near-term future is assured in this next upcycle, we do not know whether it's way of doing business will prevail over others. The corollary is whether LSI will see a steeper decline in its business during the next downturn in the semi market. Quite frankly, I can see a very strong case for both scenarios in both types of markets. As a sidebar to these questions, one of the figures, I shall be watching is the growth of MINT over the next few quarters. I think MINT's performance will provide a key to the answers of some of these questions.