Xicor-all new - 500 Beiträge pro Seite

[Milken10]

The annual meeting was quite an experience for me. Mainly, because of all the different people I got to meet and the ability to hear first hand, their views on Xicor. I managed to talk to quite a few Yahoo personalities; patientgambler, rvwink, jetstream1103, YBRICH, theyhaveit, wilhelmsf and several "lurkers", one named Dave from Dallas and the guy from Allied who is always on the CCs come to mind...hope I didn`t leave anyone out... To all of you it was a pleasure meeting you!

There was a reporter there from the local paper the Mercury something..Anyway she is doing a story on XISI..

I have several characterizations of the meeting that I would like to pass along. The first was that Bruce Gray was absolutely accessible. He showed up at least 45 minutes early for the meeting and answered every question that was asked of him. He also lingered for awhile after the meeting and I don`t think anyone can say they left without having a chance to ask their questions. For that I salute him.

The next strong impression I had was of Levis. This guy is on top of his game and gave a very good presentation. He knows the right way to to go and I liked his style.

I thought Klein was very defensive and ultra-conservative in his views. I will say he is knowledgeable of the business... He said the CEO search would "probably take from 3-8 months" and that Bruce was a candidate. On a differnt matter, he said that ordinary shareholders would be allowed to ask questions on the earnings CC.

My view is that Bruce has 3-8 months to turn the revenue situation around and I get the impression he is going to maximize that opportunity. We shall see.

The board of directors did not impress me at all....I predict that 3 of the 4 will be gone by next year. A fresh set of directors would really help the company in my view. Raphie said any names offered up by shareholders would be considered.

Gerry Hench was professional and social but didn`t take a big role in the meeting...Even so, my impression of her was raised by the small interaction.

I got the impression that the company was on schedule to be fabless sometime in the fourth quarter, although the road is very rocky and full of potholes.

C7 is up only at Yamaha. Sanyo is in the process of qualifying to C7 and should be up Q4 to Q1 of next year. Not all new parts are C7..C5 is more appropriate for analog designs...That is not to say that C7 is not critically important to the company...it is everything we were told back when they used to talk about it. It sounds like the time-keeping devices are C7 and they are ramping up in revenues presently.

The number of design wins this year appears to be about double that of last year...

Many of the other VPs were there as well as some of the mid level directors. Quite a few of the "design team" showed up as indicated by their shirts.

If one measured shareholder sentiment on a scale of -10 to +10 I would say I observed about a -8.

Bruce Gray was not nominated for director during the voting and is not a director for sure. The proceedings did allow for nominations of additional directors but no others were nominated besides the four repeating directors.

With 6000 miles behind me, I was smoking down the last ten miles of road with Led Zepp`s "Cashmere" blasting, the AC cranked all the way up and the windows cranked all the way down, I couldn`t help but feel my trip was successful....Even with all the fumblings, without a doubt Xicor is worth more than $8/share.

[Milken10]

Thinking of Investing in XICO
by: pjfriz 6/10/00 2:29 pm
Msg: 7724 of 7754
I have been looking at this company for a few weeks now and I am thinking about putting a wad into this company. I have been looking for a company to get in early on instead of my usual pattern of buying well known companies that have already made major moves in share price. This would be unusual for me to invest in a relatively unknown company like XICO but the numbers for this company got my attention. Here is what I have been looking at: (numbers from most recent report)

Revenue growth = 25%, Gross margins = 42%, Net profit margin = 9.3%, EPS growth = .13 vs -.22 in year ago quarter.

One of my favorite is a calculation I learned from Motley Fool, the flow ratio. I am sure that most of you are familiar with it but just in case here is the formula:

Flow = Current Assets - Cash and Equivalents / Current Liabilities - Short Tern Debt

Anything below 1.25 is considered outstanding. I have found that hardware companies, even good ones, rarely beat this number so I often use 1.5 to 1.7 as a better indicator for those companies. Software companies have an easier time beating this number it seems, at least in my experience. Unless I have miscalculated the flow ratio for XICO is .63. For what its worth, this ranks up there with the best. Here are some flows for some well known companies: AMAT = 1.47, NTAP = 1.5, SUNW = 1.10, KLIC = 2.06, AAPL = .47 SILI = 1.51.

Of those examples only AAPL was lower than XICO. The Fools say this is a good indicator of the cash and inventory flows of any business. I don’t understand all the dynamics myself but I have noticed that the best companies have low flow ratios. So there may be something to it. A flow ratio of .63 would certainly impress the Fools I think. Overall the numbers on XICO look more like a Motley Fool Rulemaker than a small unknown that trades at 7 bucks per share.

The one area that I am a little concerned about is that they only grew revenues in the last quarter by 25 percent versus the previous year’s quarter. Nothing particular wrong with that, at least they grew, but most of my other investments have been averaging revenue growth from 50 percent to 100 percent or more. I would be interested in comments from long-timers in this stock on this issue. What do you think of the long term revenue growth for this stock? Let me know if I am in error on any of my numbers. Of course I realize that numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. There are also intangibles that go along with any stock purchase that can’t be quantified by a simple calculations. That’s what I am investigating now. Anyone care to help? I would also be intersted if anyone knows about any other up and coming companies that may be worth investigating. Like I say, I would like to get in relatively early for a change. Thanks in advance

[Milken10]

In the hope of better amortizing my travel investment, I scheduled my return flight 12:50 PM Saturday. I needed to do something uniquely Californian on Friday morning to make this work. I choose the Big Basin Red Wood Park as my target. In the absence of guidebook, I based my decision on a map I found in the excellent book called California Golf. I decided to access it in a round about path going up US 1 to Pescadero State Park and then coming back to the Big Basin. Once I had invested some extra miles in the longer route North of Santa Cruse on US 1, I started waiting impatiently for my investment to pay off. Where are views I wondered at regular intervals. “If not now, when?” While the California Coast may disappoint in the short term, at Pescadero State Park I was rewarded with wonderful views that I felt worth a full 100% return on my morning’s time investment. I then turned east and to my amazement I started seeing red woods right on the road on a regular basis. At a drink stop, the postmaster suggested a road called Alpine road when I told him how much I was enjoying the driving. I was rewarded with additional Redwoods to the point that a visit to the park became unnecessary. Then the road climbed to 15,000 feet and I had a wonderful mountain view which also quite special.

The idea of not knowing when it will happen, but having faith that it will also now represents my view on investing in Xico. Benefits of Xico to people who want to travel with it start with the fab less conversion and the move to C-7. As these two improvements inevitably occur, Xico’s profit margins, cash flows, and competitiveness will all greatly improve. I can`t predict when they will translate into to dramatically higher earnings, but I know they will. Because the size of these margin improvements are both quite substantial, I can afford to be patient as to the actual timing.

The much-publicized move to mixed signals is the second leg of the trip. Like Redwoods, mixed signals take a long time to grow and are principally found in California. But if you are patient, the product cycle is longer, the margins are twice the commodity sector and if you sell them into high growth applications like fiber optics substantial internal growth is possible as well. If one looks at the R&D invested by Xico in new mixed signal products as a percentage of mixed signals revenues, it is 30% plus. The commodity market provides two benefits to Xico. It supplies Xico with both invaluable customer contacts that provide feedback about potential new products. Also commodity sales funds the abnormally high Mixed Signals R&D investment which allows them to target and achieve a 50% growth rate for this sector.

At some point, when the percentage of mixed signals is high enough, Wall Street will get it, and Xico’s valuation will fundamentally adjust upward on a permanent basis. Given a choice between Xico earning $1.20 in 2001 including more robust sales growth and more eeprom business and Xico earning a $1 with the current plan, I would choose the current plan in a heartbeat. A mixed signals company with a track record of success will be worth 50 times earnings, as Xico moves along this path, its multiple will gradually reflect its progress. I will settle for the rewards of 400%+ growth from the current price to say $35 a share. Do I care when I get there? Not particularly. The progress won`t be linear, but in fits and starts but the ultimate reward is high enough that I am prepared to let it happen. There are a lot of smart people investing in wall street and Xico has 3 analysts covering the stock. As these changes actually take place, they will affect earnings positively, and the word will get out. I view Xico not as a good buy at these prices, but as a great buy with triple upward leverage, none of which is in the current price in my opinion

[Milken10]

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/research/chart.gsp?lotemp=&pe…

[109]

fuck,
stop that f..... crosspost, loser!

[Milken10]

Let me join the others in thanking you for such an informative post. I must admit that I am not a numbers guy when it comes to investing. So I especially appreciated the way you "broke down the numbers" for us laymen.

You have also just reinforced my view that Xicor`s stock is really an incredible buy. The semiconductor industry is seen as growing at 30% a year for at least the next three years. I read in (I think) EE Times that the cell phone market will grow from 1 Billion units in 2000 to 3 billion units in 2010, and contrary to popular opinion, cell phones will not be a price-sensitive market. As was written previously on this board, Xicor`s serial EEprom memory business gives them an excellent opportunity to present their new mixed signal products to the big wireless manufacturers. In my opinion, just a little positive surprise for the upcoming quarter will propel the stock price back into the double digits.