Asian companies have a tendency to disclose a lot more about the ebbs and flows of business intra-quarter due in part to their lack of Regulation FD. As much of the supply chain produces and procures product from Asia, this research tends to be enlightening.
Citigroup just completed a 20+ company tour and these were the key takeaways:
- PC market picked up in February and was better than expected. March is "pretty stable" with build plans unchanged. Notebooks are healthy. Sell through is fine. Inventories are lean. Nvidia may be losing some share to new products from ATI.
- Handset pushouts are emerging. "Major customer" set an aggressive forecast but coming in below plan – not sure who this is yet. Motorola still poor but not worse. Texas Instruments is not having success with Ecosto platform and they remain cautious on the stock into the mid-quarter update tonight.
- PLDs are seeing a strong ramp in March due to 3G and high definition broadcast equipment ramps – both Altera and Xilinx are seeing this strength.
- DRAM vendors built inventory since year end and inventories remain "pretty high." Companies are expecting DRAM shortages in Q3 – this sounds preposterous right now. NAND pricing is worse than expected. There may be a pickup in iPod orders.
Overall, this is pretty in line with my thinking. If anything, I'm surprised PLDs are so strong (though I've recommended buying Altera) and that PC continues to chug along with no real logjam. If there were ANY iPod orders it would be a pickup, Apple has been completely dead all quarter.
They're having a conference call at 10:30am to discuss this data further.
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