Tag Archives: oud

Apple Suppliers Are Among Touted Chips, While Intel Seen A Laggard

CLSA started coverage on a host of chip stocks, including some Apple ( AAPL ) suppliers, trying to separate the wheat from the chaff among Microchip Technology ( MCHP ), NXP Semiconductors ( NXPI ), Broadcom ( AVGO ), Intel ( INTC ) and others. CLSA gave a buy rating to NXP, a supplier to Apple and the automotive market, with a 105 target. NXP rose 0.7% in pre-market trading on the stock market today . . Broadcom, another Apple supplier, gets an outperform rating from CLSA, with a 165 target. Broadcom rose fractionally before the open. CLSA gave a buy rating to Microchip with a 58 target. Microchip rose slightly. Intel is seen underperforming the market with a 30 target. Intel shares were little changed after closing Monday at 30.39. One analyst thinks Darden Restaurants ( DRI ) is looking tasty, while another is curbing enthusiasm for F5 Networks ( FFIV ). Piper Jaffray raised Darden to an outperform with a 78 target. Darden was little changed. F5 Networks got a downgrade to sector weight from overweight at Pacific Crest as shares neared its prior 109 price target. Shares fell a fraction. FBR Capital thinks now is a good time to wade back into the oil patch, upgrading Halliburton ( HAL ) to outperform from market perform and raising its target to 49 from 44. Halliburton rose slightly.

Startup Bubble Bursting, Valuations Due For Reset, Analyst Says

A bubble in valuations for private Internet companies is about to burst, according to Silicon Valley provocateur Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research. “The startup bubble is bursting, the exit value of many startups may be one-fifth of the peak value,” Chowdhry said in a research report Monday. Some startups believed to have qualified as unicorns — meaning they have valuations above $1 billion — will lose that status, he said. IBM ’s ( IBM ) acquisition on March 31 of Bluewolf Group, a provider of cloud consulting and implementation services, could be a benchmark, Chowdhry said. Bluewolf was rumored to be valued at more than $1 billion a year ago, but was likely purchased for about $200 million, he said. IBM didn’t disclose financial details of that acquisition, indicating IBM considers the deal immaterial to its financials, where it almost certainly would give details of any $1 billion acquisition. At $200 million, the acquisition would be just one-fifth Bluewolf’s apparent peak value, says the analyst. Using the Bluewolf deal as a benchmark, enterprise cloud company Nutanix would have a true value of $400 million, not $2 billion as currently believed, the analyst says. Cloud-based software firm Cloudera is probably worth $900 million, not $4.5 billion as venture finance rounds have valued it, Chowdhry said. If other unicorns are revalued at one-fifth their peak valuation, file-hosting service Dropbox and visual bookmarking tool Pinterest are each worth $2.2 billion, not their reported $11 billion. By a similar measure, big data analysis firm Palantir would be worth $4 billion (not $20 billion), accommodations rental firm Airbnb would be worth $5.1 billion (not $25.5 billion), and ride-hailing service Uber Technologies would be worth $12 billion (not $60 billion), Chowdhry said. Chowdhry isn’t alone in calling a bubble in valuations of startups. The Wall Street Journal reported this month that venture capitalists are seeing signs of a bubble getting ready to pop.

Apple Supplier NXP May Beat Tesla Partner Nvidia To Autonomous Car

Apple ( AAPL ) chip supplier NXP Semiconductors ( NXPI ) batted the iPhone slowdown Monday by unveiling a radar, lidar and vision-sending engine that could beat Tesla Motors ( TSLA ) partner Nvidia ( NVDA ) to the autonomous-car punch. The product platform was revealed during NXP’s annual user forum in Austin, Texas, and comes as Nvidia stock has hit record highs the past two trading days on Wall Street after reporting eye-popping Q1 earnings after the close Thursday. Nvidia touted its machine-learning sales for the Q1 beat. Machine-learning, analysts and companies say, will be essential to creating safe, fully autonomous vehicles. NXP’s BlueBox engine incorporates “embedded intelligence and machine-learning required for complete situation assessments,” the company says. On the stock market today , NXP stock rose 2.3%, following its BlueBox announcement, to 84.97, putting it up a fraction for the year. Shares had hit a 19-month low during the February dip that hurt most Apple suppliers. Apple’s iPhone shipment decline has chip investors worried about the next semiconductor frontier, as smartphone sales hit the brakes. But NXP CEO Rick Clemmer recently told IBD that 40% of his company’s revenue stem from automotive sales. For its Q1 ended April 3, 21% of NXP’s sales stemmed from its smartphone segment. The BlueBox engine uses NXP silicon and software at each advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) node and incorporates radar, lidar and vision-sensing to complete a 360-degree world model around the vehicle. “This functionality greatly improves car safety by both managing and preventing emergency situations,” NXP says. And “unlike closed systems focused only on vision and other single-sensor data streams, the NXP BlueBox engine for autonomous vehicle is an open-source platform.” Programmers can customize BlueBox to their specifications, NXP says. The product already is in hands of customers of four of the world’s top five carmakers, NXP says. It has been shipping since September but now is broadly available.