"Broadcom Defines the Tech Quandary"
By James J. Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
5/16/2005 9:01 AM EDT
"Broadcom (BRCM:Nasdaq - commentary - research) defines the difficult questions facing tech investors. It has a new CEO, whom everybody likes. The guy's been on the road promoting the great secular growth of the company. And it does have it, with chips in all of the right places. It's a good story that doesn't need cyclical strength to play out.
But has it already played out? The company sells at 28 times earnings. That's too rich for almost all but the Yahoo! (YHOO:Nasdaq - commentary - research)-Google (GOOG:Nasdaq - commentary - research) cohort. Every time we buy up at that level, we seem to get singed. The stock's moved from $27 to $34. Why not just declare victory, take the gain and move on?
Now, we know this stock went down, along with a lot of other tech stocks, when we had a weak February and a weaker March, coupled with that disastrous IBM (IBM:NYSE - commentary - research) report. That drove Broadcom to $27 -- where it shouldn't have been.
Now, April's stronger, the stock's back up and we know that IBM was an outlier. Aren't we just really back to the trendline then? Isn't that what happened? Didn't we just overpenalize Broadcom and some others for being IBM when they weren't?
So, we are back to where we should have been, but I can't think of what could take us past this. Momentum? What a slim reed that is these days. Pin action off Dell (DELL:Nasdaq - commentary - research)? We had it. Borrowed from it already.
Mind you, this exercise is quite different from the Google activity, even if the trend line seems the same. There you had an analyst -- Jordan Rohan -- link Google with a slowdown at the exact same time that growth was accelerating.
That's how you could get a move that keeps moving.
Broadcom doesn't have that. It just has consistent secular growth that was underestimated at $27. And may be overestimated at $34.
That's why this game is so hard. That's why we keep struggling. Because that's the same small window in which we can make money.
And it keeps closing. "
(in
www.realmoney.com)