Although one could argue that Analog Devices' upbeat outlook merits raising the number even further, we would prefer to wait and see how growth shapes up over the year as Analog Devices catches up with its backlog and the current feeding frenzy for Analog Devices products dissipates. |
Although the company is executing in terms of cost control, we think margin contractions at the gross margin level will continue through the second quarter as well, which we had not factored in. |
At 27 times our 2003 earnings estimate Intel is still expensive relative to its growth prospects and its own history. |
Despite our conservative remarks on margin compression and pricing intensity, we continue to believe Intel will meet our revenue forecast and reiterate our intermediate-term neutral and long-term accumulate rating. |
For now, we're staying with the neutral intermediate-term rating on AMD's stock until we see how the company weathers the Northwood launch. We are still long-term strong buyers of the stock -- even if AMD suffers at the hands of Northwood it will not plunge as deeply into loss as it has during past Intel offensives. |
Given the challenges Intel faces currently with its business model, we think the stock needs to trade on a lower multiple of 2003 earnings to be attractive. |
I don't think I've ever seen competitive momentum shift like this, so congratulations. |
I'd be a lot more comfortable with the group at 20 times [2003 earnings]. |
In posting the weakest Q4 revenue result and Q1 outlook since the bursting of the bubble, Intel has made it clear how much competitive ground the company has lost to AMD. The extent of the losses has exceeded our expectations. |
In the best-case scenario, an inventory correction would lead to the communications integrated-circuit sector just making consensus estimates, breaking with the precedent set over the past six quarters and not raising forward expectations. Even this, we believe, would negatively impact the stocks in this segment. |
Intel's mid-quarter update was generally in line with our expectations, which supports our checks suggesting that the PC market is tracking normal seasonality in the back-end loaded third quarter. |
Intel's status as an industry bellwether has allowed the stock to move with the industry in the past. |
It is very hard to find any evidence of a real end to the upturn that began in late 1998. Although we see little to support semiconductor stock prices during the next two months, we strongly believe that the sector will be hitting new highs before the end of the year. |
It's a little harder in June, because this is an especially back-end loaded quarter. But even so, $6.4 billion to $7 billion is a fairly wide range, and since they've been doing this mid-quarter update, they have adopted the practice of narrowing it down. |
It's not going to effect the company's position. |