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Jun 29, 2007 at 04:10 PM |
Sarbanes Oxley's compliance rules may be to blame but it seems they can be used as an excuse by executives to say as little as possible in public.
I have got used to the response that companies can't say anything at a given time because they are in ‘the quiet period.' My retort usually goes along the lines of "Don't mind me, I am not in a ‘quiet period' so go right ahead!"
Sarbanes Oxley, however, goes way beyond this and shows an emerging trend that should be highlighted.
In the good old days, company executives would highlight business goals with clear future milestone dates attached. Granted, these wouldn't be divulged on a specific day in any given month, but at worst the communication would take place at a particular quarter-year period and at best when it was a given month.
Those good old days are disappearing fast, as noted by two recent executive milestone commentaries. The first was in yesterday's analyst conference call at Micron Technology. The second is the long-running saga of the launch by AMD of its new Barcelona quad-core thingy.
I noted in a Wall Street Journal article that quoted Randy Allen, a corporate vice president at AMD, as saying that the eventual launch of Barcelona isn't really delayed because it is "aligned" with the company's previous stated schedule.
The problem with this is that the extent of AMD's comment from this year was that Barcelona would be launched ‘around mid-year.' It would now appear that first launch is late August but mainstream ramp of various versions isn't until September and others before year-end, while some mobile MPUs launch ‘next-year'!
Without being remotely specific, AMD can claim just about anything, with Allen's being ‘aligned' claim as a perfect example. Slightly ridiculous comment really, as the world and his dog know that delays have occurred. AMD is sure missing its prescription of reality pills this year!
Moving on, Micron executives' comments also need to be discussed in this vein. To set the scene, Micron is ramping its NAND flash fab in Lehi and has repeated in several conference calls that the ramp is ‘on schedule,' even though scattered reports late last year indicated that timings had slipped due to various reasons such as manpower shortages, tool shipments and install date slips etc...
But because Micron has never said publicly what was the exact schedule to start with, this has left analysts unsure of whether the progress is good, on track or slipped a quarter!
They still pick up execs on this, and when Kipp Bedard responded to a question about Lehi's ramp and said, "On a timing basis, Lehi is running about on schedule from a wafer perspective," you realize that no proper answer was given and we are little the wiser on whether schedules were met, being met or will continue on that course.
My own research suggests delays occurred of 8 to 12 weeks, but Micron, as so many others, will not be specific even in the worst-case example I noted above.
I am waiting for the biggest laugh when we hear an exec say that ‘we are right on target with the plan but can't give you details of what the target or plan is.' So we will just have to trust them then...or not?
It also won't take long I guess for Sarbanes Oxley to enter the dictionary, with the phrase's entry under swear words that one would use when referring to corporations and executives!
The WSJ story is here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/_wsj
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