BusinessWire
June 19, 2008 03:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time

Zacks Analyst Interview Highlights: Altera, Xilinx, Avnet, Intel and AMD

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Zacks.com releases the latest Analyst Interview. Today’s interview is with senior analyst Abdul Saleh, who discusses Altera (Nasdaq: ALTR), Xilinx (Nasdaq: XLNX), Avnet (NYSE: AVT), Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and AMD (NYSE: AMD).

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Is Altera the main company producing these new programmable logic device [PLD] products?

Altera’s (Nasdaq: ALTR) main rival is Xilinx (Nasdaq: XLNX). Together they hold nearly 80% of the PLD market. However, the company has a strategic advantage over Xilinx regarding its HardCopy offering (a new type of high performance application-specific integrated circuit for which Xilinx does not really have a competing product).

The primary theme to watch at Altera over the next 12 months is new product introductions and technology migrations. During the 65nm transition cycle for the semiconductor industry, Altera trailed Xilinx significantly in terms of timing. Altera is only beginning to ramp up 65nm products at the moment.

Altera also will begin rolling out this year its first 45nm products. This is not only ahead of Xilinx, but uniquely is also at par with at least one of the two major PC central processing unit [CPU] vendors in the IC [integrated chip] industry.

Very interesting. On which company did you recently publish a Sell?

Phoenix-based Avnet (NYSE: AVT). The company is being adversely affected by the price war between Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and AMD (NYSE: AMD); it is expanding its relationship with AMD even as its Intel business shrinks.

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