Conference nyoss1::market_investing

    Intel has a lot of chips. I am guessing that you meant the new chip
    they are working on and will sell at about half of the price of our
    ALPHA chip. Intel is the leader in the "chip world". But, it's not
    without competition. And guess what? DEC is not their toughest
    competitor. However, this is not saying Intel is not a good stock to
    buy. Those people who bought in early, have already made a bundle on
    it. 
    
    Mike

    Yes I was talking about the alpha chip. Who are the main chip makers
    besides intel?

    Motorolla (sp?) is a runner-up. And... IBM, DEC, HP, SUN - just to name
    a few. There was an article in yesterday's VNS News talked about this.
    The author seems to think the IBM/APPLE alliance will give Intel a run
    for its money.

    
    	I don't know the exact numbers but Intel was up $7.5 yesterday
    	to about $98 I think on news of its win over Japan. Same with
    	the US auto stocks (Ford Taurus #1 in sales over Honda Accord)
    
    	Bob

    INTEL has a superb record, but the price has shot up a lot in the 
    last few months.  It was at 55 in April, 87 on Dec. 31, and is now
    around 112.  That's already discounting a lot of growth.  Any 
    negative surprises will have a big impact on the price, probably.
    But, they have a very strong business.
    
    Mike

    The success of Intel will be based on the need for more and more
    powerful cpus.
    
    Most users now consider a 486 as the base system to run windows. If
    Windows NT is half way successful, Intel's growth will continue.
    
    Competitors will have a very difficult time because of:
    	- Intel's intellectual property rights,
    	- the huge amount of capital required to compete against Intel, and
        - the success of Intel's "Intel Inside" campaign.
    
    
    Gim

With the recent Intel run-up, anyone think that Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE:AMD)
might show a similar run?  They've got low debt, a lot of cash, but have
lost a recent judgement with Intel.

John Piekos

    Intel also has DEC's marketing department ("Alpha AXP PC for less
    than $10,000") working for them... ;-)

    re .8
    
    When the news on AMD losing part of the suit was released last year, 
    AMD went down to the $8.00 area, and has since shot back up to 
    about $20. I also read that AMD makes more money on the other products
    it sells, like it a/d & d/a chips. Where as the profit margins on the 
    386 clone are just not that high. 
    
    re .9
    
    Is that good, or bad?
    

 Fiscal News - Intel, Motorola
 Intel - Reports 4th quarter surge in profits
	{The Wall Street Journal, 14-Jan-93, p. A3}
   Intel said net income for the period ended Dec. 26 more than doubled to a
 record $428.6 million from $188.7 million a year earlier.  Revenue grew 54% to
 a record $1.86 billion from $1.21 billion.  The results were "unbelievable,"
 said analyst John Marren of Alex. Brown & Sons.  "They are the clear leader in
 the semiconductor industry and they are now becoming the bellwether technology
 stock, that along with Microsoft [Corp.], is taking over from IBM."  Intel
 continues to be the sole supplier to computer makers of the 486 chips, which
 carry high margins.  Intel said that its 4th-quarter gross margins were 61%,
 up from 52% in the year-earlier period, while its net margins rose to 23% from
 16%.  Intel's main challengers, Advanced Micro Devices and Cyrix, are cranking
 out clones of Intel's older 386 chips, which have lower margins and are used
 in models of computers that, in some cases, are already beginning to be phased
 out  by manufacturers.  Cyrix and AMD both plan to sell 486 clones this year,
 but neither has begun volume production of such a knock-off yet.

(reprinted without permission)

I own Intel shares and have been following them for a while. Everything
I've read says they are a financially strong company and are a "buy and hold"
investment. 

Pat

    
    Intel down 12+ !!!
    
    Is this an overreaction to the possible copyright appeal by AMD ?
    Time to buy ?
    
    -Ed
    

    Intel Corp's stock plunged because of the ruling of last friday by 
    US District Judge William A. Ingram. The suit by intel sought to
    block AMD's marketing of a clone of Intel's top of the line 486 
    microprocessor (Boston Globe). AMD has not been able to sell there
    "clones" of the 486 chips up to this time.

    Re, -2
    
     Apparently it is still overpriced .. it fell about 6.5 points
    yesterday. 
     
     Nitin.

    
    
    	I also read they will have to cut their price on the 486 to stay 
    competitive, meaning less profit...
    
    John 

    
    AMD will, at best, make about 50,000 486's in 1993.  Intel will make
    over 30,000,000.  Intel has the manufacturing capacity, and is building
    more, to drive the costs down.  In order for AMD to make 486's they
    have to steal the capacity from their 386 line. 

    re: .16
    
    Where did you get that number?  AMD seems to think that they will be
    producing a lot more than that, at least from the reports I've read...

    re: .16  In order for AMD to make 486's they
    have to steal the capacity from their 386 line. 
    
    Early this year I typed in an article from _InfoWorld_ which was widely
    circulated.  It said that the big mail-order PC manufacturers had
    stopped production of 386-based desktop PCs.  I imagine that in the
    $2-3,000 price class and even down around $1,500, the demand is mostly
    for 486-based systems.  So AMD might find it more profitable to shift
    its output based on market demand alone.
    
    Wes

	Re. .16 (Intel making over 30 million 486's in 1993). 

	This does not sound right. When Intel sells each 486 at an average
	price of $400 (perhaps higher than this, now that they sell lot more
	DX2-66's than the DX25's and lower), this gives a revenue of 12 billion
	from 486's alone! Intel is currently a 7-8 billion $ revenue company,
	including all other operations. 

    re: .19 i486 chip prices and volumes
    
    If you read somewhere that the manufacturer's price for a chip is $400
    "in volume," i.e. quantity 100, 1,000 or 10,000 price points, don't
    believe for a minute that high-volume PC manufacturers pay anywhere
    close to this price.  Price and volume are very slippery issues in the
    semiconductor industry, with large volume customers able to strike
    excellent deals, historically.  Note the discrepancies in pricing from
    different sources quoted below.
    
    However, in the interest of injecting some professional analysis into
    this discussion, here is a bit of the story "An unfettered AMD brings
    486 to market," _Electronic Engineering Times_, April 26, 1993.
    
    "The impact of AMD's new 486 family is expected to be minimal at first. 
    The company's capacity for the part is limited this year to its R&D
    facility here [Sunnyvale, Calif.], and its expected clean-room version
    later this year would prompt a transition among systems designers. 
    Other vendors of 486-like CPUs -- Intel, Cyrix Corp. and Texas
    Instruments Inc. -- are also struggling with capacity constraints.  The
    capacity crunch should keep 486 prices from dropping as sharply as 386
    prices.
    
    [AMD's pricing is $306 for the 486-33DX and $417 for the 486-50DX2 "in
    volume," with a low-voltage 33 MHz part for portables also selling at
    $306.  A 40 Mhz DX part is also available.  AMD is quoted as planning
    to introduce an additional variety each quarter.  The first
    introductions are aimed at the most lucrative part of the market.]
    
      "AMD is negotiating for [chip] foundry capacity, but [marketing
    director Subodh] Topriani declined to offer details.
    
      "Tony Massimini, a senior analyst at In-Stat Inc., Scottsdale, Ariz.,
    said last week that with the Intel microcode, AMD's share of the 486
    market could approach 10 percent this year.  The potential revenue for
    AMD is significant: with a total 486 market forecast for 1993 of nearly
    24 million units shipped, that would mean AMD would be shipping nearly
    2.4 million 486s.  In-Stat also forecasts average selling prices for
    486s this year to range from $64 for SX versions to $264 for DX
    versions.
    
      "AMD expects to ship 'thousands' of devices in May, thanks to a small
    backlog it has created, and 'hundreds of thousands' by year's end.  In
    comparison, AMD ships some 12 million 386s a year and Intel ships some
    5 million 486s a quarter."
    
    
         Wes

    
    ANybody know why the sudden surge in INTEL?
    
    9+- points in the last week and half

    Digital Marketing?  ;-)
    
    They recently upped their Pentium delivery numbers (>2m in 1994)...
    maybe that had something to do with it.  KB

Silicon plants literal costs billions to build. Name a few
other products (other than memories) that have volumes in
the millions and that are in extremely high demand.

Intel is a cash machine for the next year or two.

Gim

> Intel is a cash machine for the next year or two.
    
    The market knows this, too, and has factored that into the current price.
    
      John

	Not just Intel, but most semi-conductor stocks have risen recently
	(note Motorola, Texas Inst are at 52 week high) as well as peripheral
	companies such as Applied Materials, etc. 

	A couple of days ago, the news was that the semi-conductor book-to-bill
	ratio had risen. All of these have gone up in the last two days. 

	-amitabh (who sold both Intel and Motorola last year withh 20-30% 
	profit, only to see them more than double since then :-()