Oracle (ORCL) Sun Shines

Yesterday Oracle (ORCL) issued stunningly good results for its 4th fiscal quarter (Q4) 2011 ending May 31st. The price of the stock promptly took a major dive in after-hours trading, and is still down substantially as I write.

Usually when this sort of thing happens, a good report followed by a price fall, it is because either: (1) investors expectations were even higher or (2) guidance for the next quarter is below analyst expectations.

This time the issue is something far more specific: the revenue derived from a specific segment, computer hardware, that was acquired with Sun Microsystems last year. Before reading my commentary below, you might want to first familiarize yourself with Oracle quarter results with my notes on Oracle Q4 2011 Analyst Call.

Despite an overall increase in Oracle revenues of 13% from year earlier, hardware systems product revenues were $1.16 billion, down from $1.23 billion in the year-earlier quarter. That raised some flags with some analysts. Which mostly shows these guys have too many stocks to cover, or were hired for their connections, not their analytic ability. Oracle management explained their strategy before, and they explained it again during the question and answer session.

I'm with management on this one: Sun was poorly run from a business perspective, and Oracle is not obligated to repeat Sun's business mistakes. Rather than looking at specific products, Oracle looked at the overall Sun problem: low margins. Fortunately, those low margins were not all of a kind.

Oracle decided to stop selling low margin computer hardware products whenever possible, with the exception of those that margins could be raised over time. So a year later, they are selling slightly less product, but making far more profits on it. Not only that, but they are gearing up to sell a lot more product, in particular their Exadata and Exalogic lines. What is there not to like about that?

Oracle is a rapidly growing, undervalued technology stock. We are not in a tech bubble. A gold bubble, yes. A bond bubble, yes. Idiots are holding bonds at this point. Bonds are trash, in most cases not bringing in enough returns to keep even with inflation. Their principal is just as much at risk as it would be if invested (wisely) in quality stocks.

I don't own Oracle stock at this point, but with the price drop and a bright future, I could buy ORCL in my next buying round. The competition is mainly small cap tech and biotech stocks that may grow even faster, and yet are also cheap right now. [See what I own at William Meyers current stock portfolio]

One aspect of the situation not mentioned was Oracle's current war with HP over Intel Itanium based computers. I don't see much downside for Oracle here. Oracle software can run on many types of hardware. Itanium was always a bad idea, and Oracle should not be obligated to support two different Intel chip architectures.

Red Hat (RHT) Shows Resilience

I listened to the Red Hat (RHT) analyst conference call on fiscal Q1 ending May 28th, 2011, yesterday. My detailed summary is at Red Hat Q1 2012 analyst call.

I recently read about the increased resilience of modern software, with Microsoft as the example. That matches my own experience. It has been years (maybe even a decade) since I have seen the Windows operating system itself crash on my computers. Occasionally I see application programs crash (especially older ones), but always the solution is to just restart them. That is resilience.

Red Hat is showing resilience for its investors. While the price to earnings ration is high, lately revenues and profits have been ramping fast enough to justify the hopes that high PEs are based on. It is still small potatoes when you compare its revenues and profits to Microsoft, or Apple, or even Google or Facebook. Long ago it was priced as the next Microsoft. Now Red Had Enterprise Linux and its brothers-in-arms JBoss and RHEV virtualization are a highly respected solution for servers, datacenters, and the cloud. It is nice to see a business software paradigm based on high quality with low prices. It is a huge benefit to the American economy.

I don't currently own Red Hat, but I bought some when it was near bottom during the late recession, so I did real well with it.

See also http://www.redhat.com/

Adobe (ADBE) Analyst Conference Call Summary Available

I have posted my summary of the Adobe Q2 fiscal 2011 analyst conference call.

Lots of interesting stuff happening at Adobe, reflecting the rapid evolution of Internet and cellular delivery of information. HTML 5 is a space to watch.

AMD Fusion Upside

AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) recently revealed that it has been unable to meet the demand for its first Fusion processors. They call these APUs, for Advanced Processing Units, to indicate that each chip includes both a CPU and a GPU (graphics processing unit). Introduced in late 2010, the first APU variety was designed to bring low cost, high quality graphic capabilities to inexpensive notebook computers. Computer makers (HP, Lenovo, Sony, etc.) embraced these first Fusion chips as a big improvement on the Atom chip from Intel, famous for underwhelming netbooks (sub-standard but very portable notebooks).

Does that mean the sun is finally rising on AMD investors (that includes me)? Intel remains not only holding most market share, but dominating the most profitable segments of the market, including chips for server computers. On the other hand Intel has its own problems, pressed from below by ARM architecture based chips in smartphones and tablets, while failing to be able to deliver the graphic quality consumers now expect. To make a workable business or consumer computer manufacturers need to add an AMD Radeon or NVIDIA GPU to the system.

Intel itself is not exactly the darling of Wall Street anymore. Today Intel is trading at 10 times last year's non-GAAP earnings per share. No tech bubble there. AMD is trading at 8.5 times last year's EPS. Intel is wading in cash; AMD has a substantial amount of debt. If you wanted to buy a computer processor manufacturing company, Intel would be the more obvious choice.

To break out of its trading range AMD, at the very least, would have to start generating substantially more earnings than it has lately. What are the chances of that, when the sector itself appears to be in trouble, and Intel has a tradition of crushing AMD whenever Intel's market share starts to slip?

It really does come down to Fusion. Intel is scared of Fusion, so it is using considerable resources to catch up in graphics technology. Intel is now paying NVIDIA to use its intellectual property, which probably includes graphics designs. That should start to show up in Intel chips in 2012. My guesstimate is that by 2013 Intel will have closed the graphics gap. So AMD's future profits, and the value of its stock, highly depends on how much market share it can pick up in 2011 and 2012, and at what kind of profit margins.

It came as a surprise to me, and probably to everyone, that AMD became supply-constrained in Q1. I think the problem is that the first Fusion chips were on the 40 nm process, which is where most graphics chips are at this year. Both NVIDIA and AMD reported supply constraints at 40 nm in early 2010. AMD failed to anticipate demand for its new chips, and so did not book enough capacity in advance. AMD now contracts for fabrication of its chips, whereas Intel has its own fabs. On the April 21 AMD analyst call for Q1 2011, AMD executives talked about insuring future fabrication capacity, so that must be about the Fusion shortfall.

Right now AMD is about to launch its second round of Fusion processors, which will be more powerful, but also will require more power. So they will be for higher-end notebooks and for desktop CPUs. The will be on the more-advanced 33 nm process. That may have its own issues, but it won't run into the 40 nm roadblock. Later this year AMD will also introduce its Bulldozer CPUs, which are not part of Fusion (they don't have graphics processing on the die).

The upside for AMD investors depends on continued support from manufacturers (HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc.) and from retailers like Best Buy. The near-universal sentiment now is that consumers get more for their money with AMD based computer systems, particularly when it comes to graphics capabilities. Thus AMD should pick up market share this year in the sub-$1000 categories of notebook and desktop computers.

One commonly told story is that consumers are moving to tablets, so sales of PCs and notebook computers are about to come to a grinding halt. The actual evidence for that is scant. In the U.S., prior to the introduction of tablet computers (they've been around for nearly a decade, but did not become popular until Apple marketed a more attractive, if less powerful, version), everyone pretty much had at least one computer, either a desktop or a notebook, maybe a netbook. Most moderate to heavy users had a PC at work and a desktop and either a notebook or netbook for personal use. As the new thing, tablets are going to sell, and with budgets tight, they are going to cause purchases of notebooks and desktops to be delayed. But most tablet computer users have found they are not really a replacement for their more powerful cousins. So, the question becomes: what do they upgrade next? Are they going to get an even newer tablet, or are they going to refresh the old desktop or notebook computer?

You know what the gadget guys will have. A good, reliable, high-performance desktop, a good notebook computer for working away from home, a tablet to be cool and consume video, and a smartphone.

AMD is not going to compete in the smartphone space, but their Fusion chips are beginning to appear in Windows-based tablets. Their stand-alone graphics chips are now used by Apple for its desktop computers.

Also, this is a global market. The same low-cost high-graphics capability that appeals to U.S. consumers will appeal even more to first-time PC buyers in India, China, Brazil, and developing countries.

A recovery of market share in the server GPU market would also benefit AMD, but I'll leave that topic to a later story.

Any reasonable investor not already holding AMD should probably take a show-me the market share and EPS gains attitude. On the other hand, there is a good chance that 2011 will be a year when those of us who already hold AMD will see the upside of Fusion. Maybe as early as the report on Q2, if production was ramped for the new Fusion products.

See also:
AMD home page