Steven Laub, President and CEO of Atmel Corporation (ATML), talked to the Wall Street Transcript about his company Atmel Corporation Click here to read the complete interview.
TWST: Please begin with a brief historical sketch of Atmel Corporation and a summary of what’s going on now.
Mr. Laub: Historically, Atmel® was focused primarily on memory products, particularly flash memory. Its growth from the mid-1980s through the late 1990s was primarily from memory products. The company began a very substantial business and product diversification as it pursued new growth drivers. I joined the company as President and CEO in August of 2006, and we dramatically changed our strategy at that time to focus on a few core product lines. Specifically, we began to focus on microcontroller and microcontroller-related technologies as the core business for the company. This led us to exit approximately 15 different businesses and product lines between early 2007 and the current time frame. We have also moved away from commodity markets and are now focused on more proprietary product markets to raise the growth rate and profitability of the company. A major impact of that is now being demonstrated in our financial results, as illustrated in the Q2 2010 financials that were just published on Aug. 4, 2010.
Mutual thrift conversions are at a record high since the late 1990s, with attractive stock opportunities for investors, says Laurie Hunsicker, who covers Northeast banks for Stifel, Nicolaus & Company.
“It’s a win in terms of getting capital,” Hunsicker said. “To the extent that a mutual bank is considering any sort of growth opportunities, the attractiveness of stock as a currency is very important, and obviously that’s not an option if a bank decides to remain mutual.”
With M&A deals and FDIC-assisted transactions still on the radars of many banks, the extra cash helps, Hunsicker says, adding that it’s still all about capital and credit. Demutualized thrifts attract investors with high credit quality, excess capital and conservatively managed balance sheets.
“One thing that’s kind of interesting: We ran a screen of all 1,300 publicly traded banks and thrifts; we decided to screen it in the extreme for the two C’s, capital and credit,” Hunsicker said. “Only three dozen made the cut. Three dozen. And not surprisingly, the majority of those were demutualized or conversions.”
John Wong, lead portfolio manager for the Asia Opportunities Strategy at Oberweis Asset Management, does not believe the unique growth story in China and greater Asia is coming to an end any time soon. Despite the pessimistic views spouted by some economists regarding China’s ability to continue its incredible economic growth spurt, Wong stays true to his long-term Asian investment strategy.
“Although Chinese growth has decelerated a bit, the second-quarter GDP numbers that China announced recently were still healthy,” said Wong, whose firm specializes in micro-, small- and mid-cap investing. “We believe that the Chinese government is less likely to introduce more tightening policies going into the second half of this year and may even ease some of their policies, which will help the overall sentiment in Asia.”
Wong believes the increasing number of privately held businesses emerging in China and Asia will drive the region’s economy for the next 20 years.
“There will be a number of Asian companies that will emerge as global leaders in the next 20 years, just as we saw with Japanese companies in the early 1970s and Korean companies in the late 1980s and early 1990s,” he said. “What’s happened over the last 10, 15 years is that the rice bowl in China was broken. This unleashed a drive in the Chinese people that we saw in the other Asian countries in the 1980s. What happened is that people upgraded their skills and learned to take risks to start their own businesses.”
As the demand for energy increases and bank dividends disappear, energy master limited partnerships (MLPs) advance as an important investment concept, according to the CIO of Dividend Growth Advisors LLC.
“We know that the prices of energy (gas, oil, coal, etc.) go up and down quite a lot; but in energy MLPs, we have an investment that has strong investment fundamentals and high distributions, which tend to go up consistently,” Thomas W.L. Cameron said.
Energy MLPs, which transport, process and store oil and natural gas throughout the U.S., have high barriers to entry and strict government regulation, Cameron says, which reduces competition and outsourcing. And to adjust for costs and inflation, the U.S. government annually sets the rates charged by pipelines.
“The annual rate adjustment enables the MLPs to generate relatively stable and increasing distributable cash flow levels, which in turn provide for stable streams of payments to the partners,” Cameron said. “The increase of the capital base provides the potential for raising distributions to investors.”
While telecom is generally written off by many as a less exciting, defensive sector, investors would be wise to not use that same brush to paint the Chinese telecom industry. Following a landscape-changing period of industry consolidation two years ago, China’s telecom players are facing increased competition to roll out more advanced 3G technologies and gain subscribers in China’s more rural regions.
“Rural penetration is low because six years ago, there was not even infrastructure. Telcos had to first wait until electricity and basic infrastructure was available in certain areas in order to even set up networks,” explained Cynthia Meng, a telecom analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (Asia Pacific) Ltd. “I think infrastructure is much, much better compared to six years ago. In the markets where it’s already penetrated, telcos are waiting for consumption levels to improve so that there will be some degree of consumption upgrade. Then the rural subscribers will be able to spend more money as compared to the early years.”
Currently wireless penetration in China is just over 60%, with the average penetration in Central and Western China sitting below 45%. Given the Chinese government’s stimulus program and urbanization initiatives, consumption upgrade and penetration-rate increases will be the driving growth forces for China’s three telcos, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom.
“The industry dynamic has changed,” Meng said. “I think it is exciting and people haven’t really noticed the change after the industry restructuring. It’s about time to take another look.”
From emerging growth plays in the Chinese telecom and agriculture sectors to optimistic domestic plays among the country’s beaten-down financial players, the themes of The Wall Street Transcript‘s top quotes this week are a summary of global and domestic market dynamics.
“At 60%, China still has a lot of growth potential, but probably the strongest growth will be driven by the urbanization initiative in Central and West China, where there is penetration-rate increase potential and consumption upgrade as the driving forces for future growth. And then for the urban market, it’s pretty much new technology, like wireless data revenue growth, that will give an uplift of telco top-line and bottom-line growth.” — Cynthia Meng, Bank of America Merrill Lynch (Asia Pacific) Ltd.
“As China is the largest consumer and producer of fertilizer in the world, we have experienced tremendous growth in the past several years. And because China has over 20% of world’s population while less than 7% of the world’s arable land, we expect robust demand for organic and inorganic fertilizers to continue for many more years.” — Ken Ren, China Green Agriculture, Inc.
“For companies that have comfortable capital ratios, the hurdle is to effectively deploy excess liquidity into higher-yielding assets, especially at a time when loan demand appears weak. I think you have to continue to look closely at asset quality, especially in areas of the country where there was much construction and land development lending.” — Rick Weiss, Janney Montgomery Scott LLC
“So the differences between us and others are in the numbers. It’s not a matter of one’s perception of an accounting rule or a debt; it is the actual disposition of the assets. When you think about it, there is no mystery. If the assets sell for more than we have invested in the asset, we’re not losing money. That is by far the most overtly obvious statement about the quality of our lending.” — Joseph R. Ficalora, New York Community Bancorp
The casual dining space offers the best improvement opportunities amid restaurant industry volatility, says Analyst Brad Ludington, forecasting that those players who focus on strengthening their brands will outperform those offering heavy discounts.
“I think the brands that have stuck to their brand identities and their core competencies throughout the recession will fare better, rather than the ones that went just for deep discounts to try to buy some traffic at that point in time,” said Ludington, who works at KeyBanc Capital Markets.
Not only is it difficult to tell customers who received discounts during the economic downturn that they will pay the full price when the economy starts heating up, Ludington says, it’s also a risk for restaurants that lured customers during promotions who weren’t necessarily compatible with those restaurants’ core consumers.
“I believe the better way to go about that has been through limited-time offers or bundling of menu items, or even adding a little something extra onto the purchase,” said Ludington, citing The Cheesecake Factory’s (CAKE) introduction of what are seen as “incremental purchases,” small plates and snack menus.
For investors seeking to actively manage their portfolios, John Lee, of 16th Amendment Advisors, suggests they consider the municipal bond market.
“Since 2008 the amount of risk capital dedicated to municipals is down significantly. Banks’ proprietary traders as well as hedge funds are far less active than they were several years ago,” said Lee, suggesting a more open playing field for muni bond players.
According to Lee, the increased variability in credit spreads that has characterized the muni bond market since 2008 offers more options for diverse trading activity.
“The separation of the different ratings was sort of painful for people who thought they owned AAA-rated bonds, but who subsequently owned A-rated securities,” Lee said. “However, there are many more trading opportunities because of the granularity in the ratings.”
Lee also points to Build America Bonds as a viable muni bond investment option, a good portion of which have been sold to non-U.S. investors.
For investors looking to diversify their portfolios, residential real estate stocks, such as homebuilders, are one solution.
“Diversification allows you to control risk,” said John F. Osbon, the founder and CIO of Osbon Capital Management. “Real estate’s valuable function is that it’s a hybrid. It has both bond and equity characteristics, and does not move in tandem with other markets necessarily.”
Osbon provides three key metrics to consider when investing in residential real estate.
“If you are looking for a high-return potential investment, I would have to say homebuilders are right near the top,” Osbon said. “If I were a speculator, I would say they are a great buy right now for a couple of very strong demographic reasons.”
While restaurant stocks have shown signs of weakness, the fundamentals are more stable than the media or markets would have investors believe, says Credit Suisse Analyst Keith Siegner. He points to potential growth stories, despite the volatility in the U.S. consumer outlook.
“We believe investors should be focusing on large consumer multinationals with strong brands, high returns and free cash flows, international growth opportunities and the wherewithal to invest in comps in the U.S.,” said Siegner, adding that having the size and scale to pursue market share is imperative in the current economic environment.
Yum! Brands (YUM) and Starbucks (SBUX) are among Siegner’s favorite names — Yum! for its long-term growth potential and ability to tap into China’s emerging consumer class, and Starbucks for its investment in comps and international margin improvements.
Siegner places emphasis on international growth stories, seen in companies like McDonald’s (MCD) and Yum!.
“For Yum!, the YRI business, getting to be potentially a $1.25 billion business by 2015 from under $500 million now, is a huge opportunity,” Siegner said. “McDonald’s is very clearly targeting [Burger King (BKC)] as a share donor in Germany, Burger King’s largest European market.”
