Roth Capital Partners analyst Arnab Chanda this morning lowered his rating on several chip stocks to “Hold” from “Buy,” citing the risk of a modest inventory build given high projected margins and growth at Intel, Marvell, Nvidia and others.
Broadcom shares are down sharply in late trading after the chip maker posted Q3 earnings. For the quarter, the company reported revenue of $1.254 billion, up 20.6 percent from the second quarter, down 3.4 percent from a year ago, and ahead of the Street at $1.16 billion.
Comments by Advanced Micro Devices yesterday apparently have triggered worries on the Street that the PC manufacturers, in their zealous optimism about the prospects for Microsoft Windows 7, may have built too many PCs.
As I noted last night, AMD said on its post-earnings conference call with the Street that it expects a less-than-seasonal sequential increase in Q4 revenues, due in part to the “the big build we’ve seen of PCs in anticipation of the Win 7 launch.”
When Paul Otellini, Intel’s famously reserved CEO first heard the news, he got quiet.
After a 13-year run–marked by some dead ends–Brian Halla thinks he finally established a winning formula at National Semiconductor. So he’s stepping down.
Halla, 63, said Friday he will give up the CEO title at the chip maker on Nov. 30 to Donald Macleod, a 61-year-old Scot who has been at National since 1978 and was serving as president and chief operating officer.
Despite Apple’s investments in developing its own custom ARM microchips in place of using Intel’s Atom mobile processors, the company has reached out to Intel as a partner to drive the adoption of the new Light Peak specification for optical cabling.
It was a big deal when Texas Instruments announced plans in 2003 for a massive chip factory in a suburb of Dallas, its home town. Six years later, the company is finally preparing for production there–under a strategy that has changed dramatically.
Global chip revenues in the third quarter are getting a big boost from inventory restocking, according to the research firm iSuppli.
According to iSuppli, in the second quarter inventories dwindled to “lean, but appropriate levels,” in a reversal of the excess inventory levels reached in 2008.
Hardware freaks flocked to San Francisco last week to hear Intel talk about microprocessors, the electronic brains in PCs. But Advanced Micro Devices made some pretty brainy claims of its own.
Shares of solar panel technology maker First Solar (FSLR) are reversing course this evening, falling to $170 after briefly going as high as $189 following a clean Q2 beat. What’s spooked people are the company’s remarks on a conference call this evening about growing uncertainty in its German market.
There goes the rally in contract chip makers. Shanghai, China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International and Taiwan’s United Microelectronics both this morning beat profit and sales estimates for their most recent quarters and forecast above consensus, but both saw shares punished nevertheless.
Shares of chip maker Broadcom fell in after-hours trading last night and are down again today despite the fact that the company yesterday exceeded Street expectations for its Q2 and forecast above estimates for the current quarter.
Intel shares this afternoon are getting a lift from an upgrade by JMP Securities analyst Alex Gauna from “Market Perform” to “Market Outperform,” with a $24 price target.
Following on a much-stronger-than-expected Q2 report last week, Intel, Gauna says, should continue to gain from better-than-expected results of its customers’ sales of notebook computers and server computers.
Strength in the NAND flash memory chip market, and from Apple’s iPhone in particular, should help SanDisk beat expectations when it reports Q2 earnings when it reports tomorrow, according to a note today from Stifel Nicolaus analyst Patrick Ho.
As expected, the huge Q2 earnings and revenue surprise by Intel last night has triggered a huge tech rally.
The question, though, is whether this is whether the trend will continue – and in particular, whether the U.S. consumer will be buying PCs in the upcoming back-to-school period.
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