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Bookham Releases LED Multiplexer Module for RPTVs |
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Commentary & Perspective...
Hot Markets: WiMax, Warm Whites & "lexel"June 1, 2006...WiMax apps appear to be driving the compound semi (CS) communications sector these days, while warm white light and "lexel" technology appear to be catching on in the fledging field of solid state lighting (SSL). The only thing down this month are the price tags of USA publicly held stocks. Along with virtually all their big brother stocks in the overall tech sector, the model CS/SSL stock portfolio dipped in May from a healthy November to April run-up. My CS/SSL model stock portfolio now includes 14 companies representative of the fields we cover in these pages. Virtually all stocks traded over USA exchanges dropped from 3 to 7% during the last month. In late March, my model CS/SSL stock portfolio was hitting remarkable heights of a 60% rise in value (ref: March 20th McD Report... but it's hard to pick "the benchmark", given the bubble-burst from the point where many of them were trading in double digits six years ago and are trading at single digits now). The last few days have seen an upturn, so maybe it's going to be one of those exciting summers. Macroeconomics aside, the star performer in the portfolio remains the steadfast and relentless Cree (Nasdaq symbol, "CREE"), which continues to perform as my poster-child company by leading in both the CS and SSL industries. But does the company's stock performance reflect the real story of Cree's progress and contributions? Far from it. Cree was one of the first I selected when forming the model portfolio one year ago because it's one of my all-time favorite companies. Buying in a year ago at what I thought was a reasonably low of $25/share. (At least compared to the triple-digit peak of the bubble). By mid April, the price had made a 6-month run from 25 to 35 and then promptly plopped back to 25. The (hopefully short-lived) panic made for some attractive buying opportunities for those that believe. Would that I could afford more than the representative 100 shares... It's important to keep in mind that the drop was totally unrelated to the company's
performance as Cree continues to be a top contributor in all their wide bandgap
(WBG) substrate and device pursuits. Take their strides in the WiMAX
space, for example, which is turning out to the hot app area currently driving
excitement in the nitride/electronics community. The WiMAX standard is
playing a major role in a movie that could be titled The Unwired World: Part
3, featuring cellphones, wireless LAN in the house/coffee shop, next wireless
(real, 1+Mbit) Internet Everywhere. Without much excitement happening in the telecom
stocks, too many trade publications have paid such sparse attention to WiMAX
that I actually had to go back and look up what it stands for, and who's driving
what. Cree's recent release of a new GaN HEMT power amp for WiMAX transistor
options was the wake up call. Ref:
Cree news release and our
coverage. WiMAX stands for World Interoperability for Microwave
Access, Inc. The lower case "i" is clever, but then everyone's
playing with combos in lower case as editors boycott anything in all caps. According
to the WiMax Forum website, www.wimaxforum.org,
WiMAX is a standards-based technology enabling the delivery of last mile
wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL, providing fixed,
nomadic, portable and, eventually, mobile wireless broadband connectivity without
the need for direct line-of-sight with a base station. WiMAX technology
will be incorporated in notebook computers and PDAs by 2007, allowing for urban
areas and cities to become “metro zones” for portable outdoor broadband
wireless access. It's obviously, the wave of the future. The hot area in the SSL side of our reporting right now is the overall field of "warm white" LEDs. North Carolina SSL startup (and Cree spinout) LED Light Fixtures Inc. (LLF) is the latest to report significant warm white breakthroughs this week at Lightfair International (ref: news release). The question some have is: Are we correctly, or mistakenly making warm whites an interim holy grail? The incandescent in your closet still can't help you see black vs. dark blue socks. And natural sunlight is still the preferred hue for humans. Maybe we should be talking up "the full spectrum future" where we deliver better light, hue-keyed on different phases of sunlight rather than just more lumens per watt. I get the feeling that's what TIR's "lexel" technology is all about, and that they're trying to form a WiMAX-like standard for the SSL industry with lexel. TIR made quite a splash at Lightfair this week with the official branding of lexel, which could indeed prove to be a linchpin SSL integration technology (ref: coverage). TIR is slowly honing their message about lexel but they're pulling the media's chain by spelling it in all lower case. If their intent is to indeed establish a WiMAX-like standard, I'd have branded it LeXel or leXel. (Not too late to change, TIR! The evolution would make a good story.) In my book they made a major error by affixing the trademark-applied-for symbol of "TM" to their wire releases. (FYI... the "TM" means the trademark has not-yet- been issued by the USPTO. Following said issue, the company gets to affix the classic "R" with a circle around it. Try and dupe that on the wire services!) The trademarks symbols are for spec sheets and ads, but they matter not to the press. Editors just delete them. Take a look at a typical wire service, (ref: Yahoo) and you'll see what I mean. That aside, thanks to "lexel," TIR Systems is finally being added to my model stock portfolio. I've tracked TIR since it was a startup which was during the early days of commercial compound semiconductors. Originally listed on the old Vancouver Stock Exchange back in the 1980s, TIR became formally listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) in 2004. As publically disclosed way back in October I think TIR will do especially well thanks to their lexel technology. TIR.TO aka TSX: TIR was trading at close of day yesterday at $1.26 (Canadian dollars), down from a year high of $2.15. In 2004 it went public and traded at about $6. Beyond Cree & TIR, the other 12 stocks in the portfolio look to have turned up from the May slip, perhaps on the speculation that the new US Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, CEO of Goldman Sachs (ref: Fortune mag Jun 1 article for a fun profile) might push back on that growing government spending that tends to give markets the jitters. All these stocks are traded on the USA's Nasdaq exchange and include: ANAD (Anadigics), AIXG (Aixtron), AXTI (AXT), CLRK (Color Kinetics), EMKR (Emcore), JDSU (JDS Uniphase), KOPN (Kopin), RFMD (RF Micro Devices), SPIR (Spire), TQNT (TriQuint), WJCI (WJ Communications), and VTSS (Vitesse). As usual, with all these, I'm in for the longhaul, and I try my best to tell readers at least 30 days ahead of time if I'm adding or deleting from the list before actually doing so (like my commentaries would actually change anything, but hey... you never know). Let's expect growth as people continue to catch on to what our technologies really mean. If you have news or
views to share about the compound semiconductor, LED or solid
state lighting industries |
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