ARM price seems to be going through a three month flattish period after a 1 year or so steady rise. Any views on what might happen next?

ARM ready to bounce back?...

http://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/ARMs+CEO+Brown+Expects+to+Gain+Market+Share+with+Windows+8+-+Digitimes+%28ARMH%29+%28MSFT%29/6564548.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

RNS Number : 6130I

Arm Holdings PLC

17 June 2011

ARM Acquires OBSIDIAN SOFTWARE

CAMBRIDGE, UK , Jun. 17, 2011-- ARM(R) [(LSE:ARM); (Nasdaq:ARMH)], today announced that it has acquired Obsidian Software, a market leader in verification and validation used in the design of increasingly complex processors. Obsidian Software is a privately-owned company, with offices in Austin, Texas.

As System on Chip (SoCs) and processors grow in complexity there is an increasing need to develop more sophisticated verification strategies. This acquisition augments ARM's drive in matching its verification strategies with the rate of change in its high performance, complex SoC IP components.

"ARM and Obsidian Software have had a long relationship which started with early work on Cortex(TM)-A8" said Mike Inglis, GM and EVP, Processor Division, ARM. "The technology and people that will come with this acquisition are a significant addition to our capabilities in maximizing quality and reducing time to market of ARM-based SoCs."

"Obsidian Software has a long history of building advanced verification tools for the ARM architecture and enabling ARM partners" said Eric Hennenhoefer, President of Obsidian Software. "The ARM ecosystem will be extended by the addition of Obsidian Software's verification solutions, which will accelerate the success of the ARM architecture in the marketplace."

The Obsidian Software validation team will become part of an ARM Processor validation team based in Austin, Texas.

About Obsidian Software

Obsidian Software, a privately held company with gross assets valued at less than $2 million , has been providing processor verification products, verification consulting and training services to processor designers since 1997. Obsidian's RAVEN software has been used by many of the world's leading semiconductor companies. Obsidian Software has been recognized as part of the INC500, Austin Heavy Hitters and Austin Fast 50.

Could be the ideal timre to trade ARM here up to recent highs. Bounced right off 38% fibonacci retractment level today and looking strong for upward momentum.

Morgan Stanley note:
We have had lots of good news so far on ARM this year and are still believers in the long-term story. However, we believe that it might be time to take a breather on the stock given the strong absolute and relative share price performance this year. Downgrade to EW.
Forecasts unchanged but shares have outperformed and upside now limited. With the shares up 42% since the beginning of the year, ARM has outperformed the SOX index by 15% since mid-February (when the SOX peaked at 475). We still believe that ARM will maintain its 95+% share in smartphones, leading share in tablets, and take share in the laptop market when Microsoft launches Windows8 on ARM. However, with the share price close to our 625p PT (5% upside), we believe an OW is not warranted. We are not changing our above-consensus forecasts for 2012/13 and expect Q2 results (26th July) to confirm strong demand for ARM licenses.
What could take ARM higher to the next level?
1) Strong consumer demand for ARM based Windows8 tablets and laptops and the availability of these products with attractive form factors earlier than the H2 2012 expectation. 2) If Apple were to look at ARM for its Macbook product line (see our note dated 11th May The Race for Apple). 3) Servers and cloud computing We believe there is room for ARM in a server market dominated by Intel (95% market share) and AMD (5% market share). However, we are still waiting for ARM to announce a 64bit and multi-threading core.
What could bring ARM lower to the 500-550p level?
If Q2 results are just in-line and the macro environment remains difficult, leading to more consumer weakness related profit warnings, we could see PE compression on ARM, even with no cuts on estimates. At 500p, the shares would trade on 33x 2012 and 25x 2013 MSe PE.]

Harry - have a look at posts 5,8 and 9. Quite amazing - we thought the good news was all in the past !

Out now

ARM: Goldman Ups To Conviction Buy On Structural Growth

Technology is a big switch-off says analyst, and ARM is made scapegoat

Bank of America Merrill Lynch was to blame, choosing yesterday to published unfavourable research on a rash of technology companies, ARM among them.

Against a weakening economic backdrop, the broker argued that investors already own too many technology shares, unlike in the aftermath of the Lehman Bros collapse in September 2008 when such stocks did well.

Merrill shifted to more conservative earnings forecasts and valuations, telling clients that it thought ARM shares would underperform others. That, despite the companys 18.4 per cent fall since early July.

Alongside ARM, Merrill downgraded the French software company Capgemini, ST Microelectronics, a Swiss microchip company, and TomTom, the American satnav supplier.
The Times

Just a minor point, TomTom is a dutch company.

ARM Goldman: conviction buy, tp reiterated 800

Has anyone got any thoughts rearding why ARM's price is going up while everything else is going down?

Autonomy effect?

Numis comment:
Upgrading to Buy from Add following share price weakness, positive prospects in consumer computing and positive read across from HP acquisition of Autonomy.

We believe ARM is the best way to gain exposure to a rapidly changing landscape for consumer computing (as evidenced by HP looking to exit PC business and abandoning its new smartphone and tablet products). There are strong opportunities for ARM to earn higher royalties as it enables this change. One or two % points change to world GDP growth is immaterial to the long term structural growth investment case.

The stock should continue to trade at high P/E multiples or otherwise fall prey to another cash rich tech goliath in the same way Autonomy has. We believe the depressed share price following recent market turmoil represents a buying opportunity. Current P/E is 40.2x FY11E and 30.7x FY12E.

The new Iphone 4s uses the a5 dual processor - so may give ARM a fillip today?

Great news out later this evening.......

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c18f84e4-fa6d-11e0-8fe7-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=rss#axzz1bHaTdkJM

3rd Quarter Results.

Easily beat in fact smashed broker forecasts of pre tax profit of 47.6 and EPS of 2.7p, this is what BNP Paribas was looking for.

Revenue ($m)
192.3
158.1
22%

192.3
158.1

Revenue (m)
120.2
100.4
20%

120.2
100.4

Operating margin
44.6%
37.7%


34.0%
18.6%

Profit before tax (m)
55.8
38.8
44%

43.0
19.6

Earnings per share (pence)
3.05
2.08
47%

2.29
1.09

Net cash generation**
43.7
65.0

GF - it made a mess when I cut and pasted it - so I didn't bother :-)

Heres a better one Skinny...


UPDATE 1-Strong licensing helps ARM beat expectations
25 Oct 2011 - 07:30

* Q3 revenue 120.2 mln stg (Company poll 116.5 mln stg

* Sees full-year revenue in line with forecasts of $763 mln

* Says healthy licensing pipeline


(Adds details)

LONDON, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Britain's ARM Holdings reported strong licensing of its chip designs in the third quarter, helping it beat market expectations and offset current weak demand in consumer electronic markets ahead of the holiday season.

The company, whose processor architecture powers Apple's iPad and new iPhone 4S, reported a 44 percent rise in pretax profit to 55.8 million pounds on revenue up 20 percent to 120.2 million pounds, both ahead of analysts' consensus. Earnings per share of 3.05 pence also delivered a beat.

"Notwithstanding the below seasonal activity levels in the wider semiconductor industry, we expect that group dollar revenues for the full-year 2011 will be in line with current market expectations of around $763 million," the Cambridge-based company said on Tuesday.

ARM reports royalties a quarter in arrears, so it has less visibility on demand in consumer electronic markets than its chip-making partners such as Samsung and Texas Instruments.

The group, which recently unveiled its latest low-energy chip design, the Cortex-A7, said it signed 28 processor licenses in the quarter. [ID:nL5E7LJ42H]

It said it had a healthy opportunity pipeline for licensing and a historically high order backlog, which pointed to another strong quarter for license revenue in its fourth quarter.

Analysts expected ARM to post pretax profit of 51.1 million pounds on revenue of 116.5 million pounds, equating to earnings per share of 2.75 pence, according to a company-supplied consensus.


(Reporting by Paul Sandle)

((paul.sandle@thomsonreuters.com; +44 20 7542 6843; Reuters Messaging: paul.sandle.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))

Keywords: ARM/

Goldfinger - as always - an amazing company.