Zacks.com Announces That Paul McWilliams Highlights the Following Stocks: National Semiconductor, Atheros, UTStarcom and Micro Linear.

CHICAGO -- When comparing year-over-year semiconductor sales, it is important to remember the Chinese New Year. Take a look at Paul McWilliams', editor of the Next Inning Research newsletter, explanation of why the Asian holiday should be considered and read about National Semiconductor (NYSE:NSM), Atheros (NASDAQ:ATHR), UTStarcom (NASDAQ:UTSI) and Micro Linear (NASDAQ:MLIN). Click here for the full story exclusively on Zacks.com: http://at.zacks.com/?id=84

Highlights from the March 27th Featured Expert column by Paul McWilliams include:

News From Tech-land

Asia has become a huge consumer of semiconductors and this has altered the seasonal patterns of the first quarter. McWilliams and the team explored this phenomenon last year in their monthly coverage of worldwide semiconductor sales by evaluating the seasonal pattern changes during the last 24 years. In this evaluation they noticed that as recently as 2000 the Chinese New Year was an immeasurable factor. However, each year since, its importance has grown significantly.

Since the date of the Chinese New Year is based on a lunar calendar it floats. This means the two-week celebration can take out as much as half of January or February and leave the month unscathed the next year. Due to this, year-over-year comparisons need to take this into consideration.

National Semiconductor (NYSE:NSM): McWilliams and his team were happy with NSM's most recent quarterly report and the fact they are focusing on high-performance analog. Several anecdotal inputs McWilliams and the team received from the field support the contention this strategy is working and that NSM is winning new designs more frequently than they had in the past.

Atheros (NASDAQ: ATHR) and UTStarcom (NASDAQ:UTSI): The Personal Handyphone System (PHS), also known as Personal Access System (PAS) got a couple of positive votes last week, but it seems few investors took notice; stock prices for both ATHR and UTSI dropped during the week. It seems the popular opinion today is this PHS/PAS trend has played out and any companies connected to it are doomed to a downward spiral. UTSI leveraged what is often called the "Poor Man's Cellular" system into a substantial business in China and owns roughly 60% of the world market for infrastructure equipment. For some reason, there is a broad perception that slowing PHS/PAS penetration in 2005 implies the model is broken and has led to a nearly 50% decline for the leader UTSI. However, this ignores what McWilliams and his team see as some very important factors.

Radio frequency (RF) chip manufacturer ATHR announced last week what is essentially a single-chip PHS/PAS phone. (Note: this is not in competition with the single chip cell phone from Texas Instruments.) Micro Linear (NASDAQ:MLIN) and Chinese Comlent both have transceivers and power amplifiers, but neither is anywhere near duplicating the ATHR chip. The net benefit ATHR brings to the party is radically simpler designs that noticeably lower the cost of handsets. These factors drive things that could accelerate the spread of PHS/PAS.

Read Paul McWilliams' complete commentary, including the factors that McWilliams believes are being ignored regarding PHS/PAS, and receive more information on the stocks above, by clicking: http://at.zacks.com/?id=85

About Zacks Featured Experts

Successful investing requires professional advice from knowledgeable experts who can help investors achieve their financial goals in good markets and improve their portfolios, especially in bad ones. That is why Zacks Investment Research has assembled the best investment experts in the business to offer their powerful advisory newsletters on all the major investment topics: Stocks, Mutual Funds, Bonds, Options, Futures etc.

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