Tech Horizon – Week of Jan 5, 2009

Big week for tech. Of note:

 

January 5 - 9, 2009
MacWorld Expo
Moscone Center
San Francisco, CA
Webcast – liveblogs from www.gizmodo.com, www.engadget.com

New Apple products perpetually expected. The annual Steve Jobs amateur medical prognosis contest is officially cancelled, however some "media" (other blogs) claim he will make a special guest appearance. Steve is not scheduled as a speaker. Analysts are looking for an iMac refresh, a Mini refresh and yet another operating system upgrade (Snow Leopard). There is speculation of an iPhone nano, a touchscreen Macbook, refreshes to the Apple TV and Time Capsule line.

Philip Schiller, Apple's senior VP of worldwide product marketing, will deliver the keynote at noon on Tuesday.

 

January 6 - 8, 2009
11^TH Annual Needham Growth Stock Conference
New York Palace Hotel
New York, NY
Webcast – http://www.wsw.com/webcast/needham27/ (password required)

Just how bad was the December quarter? Bad. Are orders picking up so far in January? Not really. Expect a lot of discussion of how great the second half of 2009 is shaping up as a hundred industry executives will be asked to guess at the slope and timing of the inevitable recovery. Many companies are in their quiet periods and will decline to comment on the current quarter -- they've already preannounced in most cases. Expect emphasis on new product rollouts and cost cutting programs in place. Despite significant order cuts throughout the supply chain, inventories have not improved this quarter – in fact, by some accounts, they have gotten significantly worse.

As government stimulus and Obamamania are potential rays of light and business is so lousy, executives are far more likely to point to the horizon ahead than the muck below. Lunar New Year is in late January and perception is Asian business will be on hold until that holiday ends in early February.

January 6 - 8, 2009
Citigroup 2009 Global Entertainment, Media & Telecommunications Conference
Arizona Biltmore
Phoenix, AZ
Webcast – http://www.veracast.com/citigroup/emt09/index_agenda.cfm

Picks into the conference from the analysts include AMT and EQIX.

January 8, 2009
JPMorgan Tech Forum
Bellagio
Las Vegas, NV
Webcast – unlikely

 

9:00-9:30 am		Nvidia Corp		Michael Hara- VP Investor Relations		12:55-1:25 pm	Xilinx	Jon Olson- CFO
9:35-10:05 am		Brightpoint Inc.		Robert Larkin- CEO, Anthony Boor- CFO Anurag Gupta- SVP Global Strategy and IR		1:30-2:00 pm	ON Semiconductor	Keith Jackson- CEO, Donald Colvin- CFO
10:10-10:40 am		Dell Inc.		Ron Garriques- President, Global Consumer Group		2:05-2:35 pm	Tech Data Corp	Robert Dutkowsky- CEO, Jeffery Howells, CFO
10:55-11:25 am		Atheros Communications		Jack Lazar- CFO		2:50-3:20 pm	Toshiba American Info Sys	Mark Simmons- President and CEO Jeff Barney- VP and GM Digital Products Grp
11:30-12:00 pm		Hewlett-Packard		Jim Burns- VP Investor Relations		3:25-3:55 pm	Micron Technology	Kipp Bedard- VP Investor Relations
12:05-12:35 pm		Microsoft		Enrique Rodriguez- VP Entertainment and Devices, Zon Ellis- Investor Relations		4:00-4:30 pm	Broadcom	Eric Brandt- Sr. VP and CFO
						4:35-5:05 pm	Texas Instruments	Dave Heacock- Sr. VP High Volume Analog Products

 

 

January 8 – 11, 2009
International Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
Las Vegas Convention Center, various hotels
Las Vegas, NV
Webcast – unknown

Palm (PALM) will show a phone based on Nova, their new operating system. Recently Elevation Partners upped their investment in the struggling smartphone maker. The short interest in this stock is very high heading into an event and expectations are pretty low for this product. The stock could get interesting as many carriers are fishing around for iPhone substitutes to upgrade existing subscribers to higher margin data plans.

Cisco (CSCO) plans to show new products targeted at consumers – a PC to TV video device, a streaming stereo and a video conferencing product. It is unlikely any of these will have meaningful impact on the share price. Polycom (PLCM) could see share pressure if the video conferencing product has more competitive pricing than Cisco's present high end offerings. Cisco's 2009 estimates still look far too high.

Dell (DELL) is expected to show the "Adamo" – their response to the Macbook Air and the Lenovo Thinkpad X300. Stock impact is unlikely.

Last year's theme was too many mp3 players – there must've been a thousand of them there. This year expect to see too many netbooks and touchscreen cellphones. Both of these product trends benefit Synaptics (SYNA).

 

Monthly Sales Data:

January 7    AUO        December quarter expected to be down 40% q/q (Digitimes)

UMC        December guidance is for -21% to -29%

    January 9    BBY        December comp estimate is -5% to -15%, consensus is -7.2%