This week will see the opening of a plethora of trade shows and conferences of all kinds across the US. If you’re fond of cars and gadgets, you can treat yourself to a fascinating trip from coast to coast in the US, starting from the mega car show in Detroit, moving south to Las Vegas to the 2007 International CES Conference, the largest consumer electronics trade show worldwide, and then on to Apple Computer Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)’s MacWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. All these events will see the launch of the first models of the hottest cars and gadgets to hit the markets over the next two years.
Also taking place this month are a number of interesting investment conferences. One of the largest and most important events in the biotechnology and medical device sectors is the 25th JP Morgan Annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference opening this week in San Francisco. The Israeli healthcare sector will be represented by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE: TEVA), Perrigo Co. (Agis Industries) (Nasdaq:PRGO; TASE:PRGO), Keryx Biopharmaceuticals Inc. (Nasdaq: KERX;), and XTL Biopharmaceuticals Ltd. (LSE: XTL; TASE:XTL).
Also opening today at the New York Palace Hotel is investment house Needham & Company’s Ninth Annual Growth Stock Conference. Among the Israeli companies exhibiting there will be Alvarion (Nasdaq: ALVR; TASE: ALVR), Camtek Ltd. (Nasdaq: CAMT; TASE:CAMT), Given Imaging (Nasdaq: GIVN; TASE: GIVN), Ituran Location and Control Ltd. (Nasdaq:ITRN); TASE:ITRN), Marvell Technology Group (Nasdaq: MRVL), Orbotech (Nasdaq: ORBK), Tower Semiconductor (Nasdaq: TSEM; TASE: TSEM), and Verint Systems (Nasdaq: VRNT).
I’ll look today at a couple of smaller companies that are gambling on coming up with a winning card at the electronics conference in Las Vegas. One example is Metalink (Nasdaq: MTLK;TASE: MTLK), which several years back predicted Bill Gates’ speech on Sunday about the wireless home and channeled all its resources, amounting to several tens of millions of dollars, into the development of suitable chipsets. I admired Metalink CEO Tzvika Shukhman’s spirit when he told me a year ago about the gamble he took. “I launched an intercontinental missile four years ago, and I hit the target,” he said.
Shukhman has indeed hit the target and we will now have to wait for the inflow of orders from the sector’s giants towards the end of the year. But an idea of the precision of his shot can be obtained by looking at Metalink’s filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), since not all the companies interested in buying the company’s chipsets wish to make any explicit announcements to that effect.
Last week Metalink notified the SEC that its chipsets would be on display not only at its own conference exhibition booth but also that of of Freescale Semiconductor Inc. (NYSE: FSL), which was recently acquired by a consortium of private equity funds headed by the Blackstone Group for $18 billion. The presence of Freescale obviously indicates an important contract win from the latter’s former parent, Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT), which will be unveiling the latest digital converters for video content relay in the home.
Another exhibitor likely to feature Metalink’s chips in its wares at the conference is Swiss chip giant STMicroelectronics NV (NYSE: STM), which has integrated Metalink’s chipsets into the design of a IP content transmission converter, whose manufacturer remains unknown. Another large company, whose presence this week at Las Vegas is somewhat irregular given that it is not one of the leading chipset or converter manufacturers, is Florida-based electronic component company Jabil Circuit Inc. (NYSE: JBL), which will unveil a converter for the wireless home fitted with Metalink’s chips.
An individual announcement of a collaboration with any of the aforementioned companies would have done a lot for Metalink’s stock, which has been crawling towards the annual high of $6.5 that it reached last May. The trouble is that not every giant is willing to concede publicly that the technological engine driving its converter is manufactured by a small company from Kibbutz Yakum in Israel.
I believe that Metalink will actually start to move once the Las Vegas exhibition is over, since investment house ThinkEquity Partners LLC, which has rated it “Buy” with a target price of $9, is arranging an investors conference in New York for company managers on their way back from Las Vegas to Israel. I understand that Shukhman recently sold stock to allow ThinkEquity to buy stock for its customers’ portfolios.
Another, half-Israeli company hoping for a turnaround after its presentation at the Las Vegas show, at least with regard to its faltering stock price, is SanDisk Corporation (Nasdaq:SNDK). After announcing its new 32-Gigabyte Solid State Drive (SSD) for notebooks last Thursday, SanDisk yesterday announced three new digital media devices, including a video player with a four-inch widescreen display.
Two things were, I felt, lacking in last Thursday’s announcement of the SSD, which is actually, an M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers product, and represents a breakthrough in the competition between flash-based and hard-drive based storage. One is that the product already has its first customer, an OEM company, rumored to be Apple or Dell Inc. (Nasdaq: DELL) whose identity could be disclosed as early as this week. The other issue is that this breakthrough would not have been possible without M-Systems’ x4 technology, which appears to be set to begin commercial production.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on January 9, 2007
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2006