Tag Archives: MU

Micron FY 4Q17 Earnings Call Notes

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Sanjay Mehrotra

Expect industry to be undersupplied in DRAM through 2018

“Moving on to the demand and supply fundamentals, we expect the industry to remain moderately undersupplied for the rest of 2017 for both DRAM and NAND. We see DRAM industry supply bit growth of about 20% in calendar 2017 and expect it to grow at relatively similar levels in calendar 2018. The DRAM industry supply demand balance is expected to stay healthy throughout calendar 2018, driven in part by ongoing strength in data center and cloud computing trends”

New CEO

“As I begin my first new fiscal year as CEO, I would like to outline our strategic priorities. First, we are focused on driving our cost competitiveness to best-in-class levels, primarily by accelerating the percentage of our output on leading edge technology, in both DRAM and NAND. Second, we will drive execution excellence, delivering solutions to customers quickly, predictably and in line with their product launch windows. Third, we will accelerate our transition to high value solutions.”

Demand trends remain strong

” we remain very bullish about the DRAM market environment through the 2017. We think it will be undersupplied. And given the demand trends, we think we will have healthy demand supply balance in DRAM throughout 2018 timeframe as well. And in terms of NAND as it’s well-known that average capacities are increasing certainly in mobile devices, but even more importantly, SSDs are displacing HDDs at the rapid pace with the attach rates continuing to be projected to be going up over the course of next several quarters. And of course, there is a strong value proposition for SSDs in the cloud and hyperscale data center environment as well given all the trends of artificial intelligence, machine learning, all of this is driving big data analytics. So, all these trends are related to artificial intelligence, bit growth in data customers wanting to offer differentiated value to their end customers, all of this is driving need for memory and storage solution and overall, we remain pretty bullish about the demand trends. I mean, if they look at DRAM as well as NAND even in autonomous vehicle, the demand requirements for flash, I mean data is being generated. So much data is being generated by autonomous vehicles that it requires fast processing both within the vehicle as well as on the cloud. So, I think demand trends for the foreseeable future continued to be strong and that bodes well for our industry.”

Secular trend of SSDs replacing HDDs in notebooks only 35% penetrated right now

” I mean it’s not that this demand is perishable, I mean this demand in terms of the trend of SSDs replacing HDDs in client notebook computers where the attach rate continues to increase in 2017 attach rate of SSDs to PCs is around 35%. That attach rate over the course of next few years continues to grow to around 50% in 2018 and by 2020 timeframe expect it to go to around 75%. So, these demand trends are secular in nature. ”

SSDs also taking share in server

“It’s the same thing on the enterprise side, again on the cloud side that the attach rate of SSDs as well as the average capacity requirements on our per-server basis continued to go up as well.”

Micron at Citi Conference Notes

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Ernie Maddock – SVP & CFO

Future data use is DRAM intensive

“use of data is expanding and as you think about applications like autonomous driving and artificial intelligence, so every single thing we contemplate that’s driving the economy, the future is reliance on data.

And when you collect data, you have to sort it and you have to process it and as more and more data is processed that becomes more and more DRAM intensive. DRAM is an essential part of harvesting and collecting insights from the data that so many enterprises are collecting these days. And then obviously you have to store it and that speaks very heavily to the demand environment on the NAND side and the storage world.
“

China wants in to the memory market

“Sure. And there’s no doubt about China’s ambition to enter the memory market, whether it be NAND or DRAM. There’s no doubt that they are building fabs and certainly equipment suppliers will suggest that there is equipment being ordered, but at the end of the day, being able to effectively produce NAND or DRAM, so the answer is the same for either technology.”

“And we continue to see very strong demand from our customers, very willing to engage in those discussions. But in general, I would say the pricing environment continues to be — continues to be good.”

I think the big driver for server demand is that there has been a massive amount of data that people now want to use

“I think the big driver for server demand and I don’t discount that AI has been an important driver, but I think that a far bigger driver is simply there are massive amounts of data that have been collected that have sat unused for a long time and you now have people using more and more and more of that data to try to form business insights and business intelligence and that is what is driving both the content increase in servers as well as what we see in this hyperscale environment. So, AI is an important trend. I think I would actually think it will be more important on an ongoing basis than it is necessarily fully impacted at least to our 2017 view. So, this is a trend that will sustain demand we believe on a going forward basis.
“

NAND growth in 40% range, DRAM in 20% range

“I think given that we believe NAND bit growth CAGRs are in the 40% plus range and DRAM bit growth CAGRs are in the 20-ish percent range, NAND is obviously growing more quickly than DRAM and we will be making decisions about where to position the company from a market perspective relative to those growth rates.”

Micron at Needham Conference Notes

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Ernie Maddock – CFO

Autonomous provides an opportunity for high growth in automobiles

“As we project forward and you think about realizing the vision of autonomous vehicles you are talking likely about four to five times increase in the current memory content on average per vehicle and then you start thinking about some of just the outright storage capabilities of having real-time maps and keeping them updated so that autonomous vehicle is equipped with the latest and greatest and you could be talking about up to a terabyte of storage in a car. So, it’s certainly over time represents one of the most significant growth opportunities from a percentage point of view and you obviously, there are fewer cars sold than there are phones or PC. So, that high growth rate is applied over a bit of a smaller base, but is a really promising area and I think it plays very nicely into the company’s strength because automotive customers are customers with whom you have to develop a much longer term relationship. They have to have assurance of supply; the entire supply chain of any company has to be fully qualified to automotive standards, which generally tend to be higher levels of scrutiny and care around the entirety of the supply chain.”

This is a cyclical industry

“The semiconductor industry went through a “cycle”. The cycle was shorter. It was less deep. Micron, although we lost money in a couple of quarters, we made money for the fiscal year so I think there’s really significant data that suggests that industry consolidation has delivered benefits relative to historical performance. I would be the last person to say this isn’t a cyclical business because the one thing that suppliers will never be able to control his the demand environment and as you know we’re in a very capital-intensive business.

We started with 25 players in this industry and now we’re down to three

“On the NAND side, you have four holders of IP, right. So, you have Micron Intel partnership, there’s Toshiba WD partnership, and then Samsung. So, I mean I think it’s important to remember in DRAM we started out with 25 players in we’ve gotten down to three and were starting out essentially four holders of IP and so whether or not — and by the way, DRAM is 30 odd years old and NAND technology is roughly half that age. So, whether or not there needs to be more consolidation you can make an argument either case I think it’s reasonable to think that any such consolidation is a way it’s coming simply because the industry starting from a very different place than the DRAM industry started from.”

Micron at Credit Suisse Conference Notes

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Micron Technology’s (MU) Management Presents at Credit Suisse

Ernie Maddock

Overall demand environment healthy

“Relative to the market as we see it, the overall demand environment continues to be healthy. We do continue to see supply growth flowing with technology transition, and of course that’s predicated on no incremental wafers being added. ”

3D Xpoint markets will take time to develop

“And then of course 3D Xpoint, the first new emerging — first new memory technology in 20 or so years. I know that folks are very anxious to see that move into a level of maturity that the other two products are. I would stress DRAM has been around for what 30 years, and NAND has been around for at least 15, and this is two years old. So there is still some market development that’s left to go. And we’re excited to see how that market progresses.”

Thoughtfully analyzing EUV but not going to replace all the edge equipment at once

“We’re thoughtfully analyzing it. At present, I wouldn’t say it has as much prominence in our thinking process might be the case for Samsung or Hynix. But we’re still not fully developed on those subsequent technology nodes. So we’ll have to see. But certainly I think it’s reasonable to think that if it used, it’s used in fairly case-specific requirement. So you’re not going to replace all the edge equipments or anything else you used to get the double patterning that supported you when you didn’t have it, you are not going to bundle that up and throw it out the door and move into UV tool as it becomes a much different discussion as you think greenfield capacity.”

Micron 4Q16 Earnings Call Notes

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Micron Technology’s (MU) CEO Mark Durcan on Q4 2016 Results

Continue to see the environment improve

“On the last call, we reported that while we were seeing signs of improvement in selected markets, we were uncertain of the extent and the duration of the improvements. During the quarter, we continue to see market conditions improve driven by both supply and demand fundamentals. Industry inventory appears lean and the current market outlook for both NAND and DRAM continues to be positive. Currently prices are increasing in number of segments, stabilizing in others and we’re seeing fewer segments showing residual declines.”

Although handset growth slowing, more content per phone

” China is becoming a more significant growth driver in mobile devices. Most of these devices are differentiated by large amounts of memory including up to 6 gigabytes low power DRAM. Additionally, the top of the line Apple and Samsung models now ship with 256 gigabytes of NAND and we see mid range Chinese handsets heading in the same direction in order to compete. Although there is a moderating pace of smartphone unit growth, significant content increases of both NAND and DRAM will generate strong overall bit growth.”

Seeing early signs of significant price movements

“Relative to market assumptions, we’re not going to get into the detail as always of the embedded margin because we don’t want to forecast the ASPs. But I think it’s fair to say that we’re seeing some early signs of significant price movements. And as we’ve done in the past, we want to wait before we get ahead of ourselves in projecting what may come as we move further out into the quarter but I do think that the trend is positive and the bias is positive.”

Channel inventory is very very tight

“if we think about inventory in the marketplace, certainly channel inventory I think is very, very tight, maybe one to two weeks or less than a week. At the major customers, we have less precision relative to that but I’d say, it’s certainly down and there is a sense of urgency at the large OEM customers as well.”

Ernie Maddock

Momentum has existed and has started to strengthen

” consistent with Mark’s prior comments, we are continuing to see positive momentum. I do think it’s important to understand that that momentum has existed and has started to strengthen and so as a result of its actual impact in our fiscal quarter with part of it already completed and we’re in negotiations for others, I think the trap we want to avoid is presuming that whatever the latest pricing news is gets retroactively applied across the entire quarter because that’s certainly not the environment that we’re living in. ‘

Own inventory is building

” we had some inventory built up that is now flowing through. However, we absolutely still continue to get more-and-more output from the factory and it’s going to be a couple of quarters before that inventory actually starts to decline, but we have a very clear view of an ability to decrease inventory meaningfully over the course of fiscal ‘17…we’re cognizant of the inventory position, we’d like to think that we anticipated that and share that with you. And we’re equally confident that the inventory will decline nearly every quarter in fiscal ‘17.”

Micron at Citi Conference Notes

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Ernie Maddock – Chief Financial Officer and Vice President, Finance

Experiencing ASP improvement, strong demand and weak supply growth

“we are experiencing the ASP improvement in the spot market as well as the contract markets. We’ve seen some nice stabilization in the PC sector and the other markets continue to be robust, the mobile market is robust, graphics, servers, so we’re coming into a good period here. It’s occurring, I think, at a time when inventories are fairly lean from an OEM and a channel perspective and then we’re entering into a period of relatively slow supply vis-à-vis what has taken place over the course of the year so far. So we think in calendar fourth quarter we’re going to see flattish sort of supply growth and I think we’ve all read the same data points that suggest on a going forward basis we’re going to see supply growth that is a little bit below, I think, what many had been expecting and consistent with our prior commentary which suggested that somewhere under 20% should no new wafers be added and there are again an increasing number of data points to suggest that you’re going to see very little wafer addition, if any.”

Spot above contract pricing suggests that further pricing opportunity

“So I think we’ve seen now a couple of consecutive months of mid to upper single digit price increases. There are no current indications that that is going to reverse itself, but we don’t make the market, we participate in the market. You still have spot reasonably above contract pricing which tends to be a good sign. So that would suggest some further momentum and further opportunity. And what we’re trying to do is make sure that we pay attention to those execution targets, so we have the bits to supply those markets and whatever the pricing environment is.”

No inventory overhang

” we think that inventories have actually been pretty well managed”
“we don’t see any excess inventory that would create a sort of negative overhang in the environment that we’re seeing right now.”

Optimistic view of the mobile demand environment

“So we’ve always had a fairly optimistic view of the demand environment out of the mobile business. We continue to have that. We’ve gotten past these qualifications, which is great. We’re in the process of sort of working through the inventory that we accumulated over the last couple of quarters in the midst of a bit growth environment that continues to be quite strong. And so we have a lot more coming out of the factories. We’ve got a couple quarters worth of inventory build that we have to work our way through.”

I think the outlook for PCs is less negative than folks expected

“I think the outlook for PCs is less negative than folks expected. We’re coming into a period of time where for the next couple of quarters I think the overall outlook is better, although still negative. So I mean I think you’re seeing all of the – a number of different factors sort of playing into the pricing environment that we’re currently seeing.”

Micron FY 3Q16 Earnings Call Notes

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Results impacted by continued weakness in PC

“op line results were primarily impacted by continued weakness in the PC segment and the mobile qualifications we discussed last quarter. With recent data points indicating some improvement in channel pricing, an expectation of finalizing our mobile qualifications and continued progress on our technology and operational milestones, we remain confident about our opportunities.”

DRAM industry supply growth in 20% range

“we believe that the DRAM industry supply growth will be in the low to mid 20% range in 2016, which is consistent with our prior commentary. If wafer output declines in the latter half of the year as some parties have forecast, we would expect to exit the year on a slower run-rate and 2017 bit supply growth could be in the mid to high-teens. This compares to our long-term bit demand forecast in the low to mid-20% range. The significant improvements we are seeing in channel pricing are not currently impacting other segments. And as a result, we continue to take a conservative view of the market environment.”

3D XPoint should generate revenue in 2017 and beyond

“Relative to 3D XPoint, we are working with market enablers across a number of market segments and continue to believe this innovative technology will be a strong contributor to Micron’s future success with revenue in 2017 and beyond”

Ernie Maddock

DRAM segment breakdown

“DRAM represented 60% of our total revenue with the following segmentation. Mobile was in the mid 20% range. The PC segment represented about 25%. The server business was in the low 20% range. And specialty DRAM, which includes networking, graphics, auto and other embedded technologies, was in the high 20% range.”

Micron FY 2Q16 Earnings Call Notes

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Mark Durcan

Automotive remains strong

“In our Embedded business unit, automotive design-in activity remains strong, particularly with 20-nanometer DDR3 and low power DDR4 products. We’re seeing growth with automotive customers in greater Asia and continuing to build upon success with European and U.S manufacturers.”

AUto is an attractive business

“Yes, the automotive business has been pretty strong for us. And its also we view it as an attractive business, because the sockets are pretty sticky, the life times of the products are longer and so from a total return its very positive market for us.”

Clearly the Chinese want to be in memory markets, and now focused on organic growth but that will be tough

“Well, its — I don’t think I’ve got anything really new to say about that. I think we’ve said before that we anticipated that clearly China was interested in being the memory market and that they would look for ways to find partners or to grow organically. We’ve now heard about significant investments in organic growth. But we would remind everyone a yes, that we believe that there are significant technology hurdles and intellectual property requirements in terms of being a major player in the memory space and we think its going to be a challenging road for the — for organic and will take sometime.”

3D X-Point update

“This year we’re short of an enablement mode, and we’re working with a number of different end market segments. Some customers then have significant interest in mobile, some customers in enterprise, or big data applications, I mean mobile for low power — from the low power benefits. Early on as we ramp this technology we expect cannibalization to be low to zero. Over time, as the technology matures and drive to significantly higher volumes. I’d expect some of that volume to come out of what otherwise would have been DRAM and maybe even eventually what otherwise have been other types of Non-Volatile memory. But generally speaking, this is a differentiated technology that will grow the size of the overall memory market at least over the next two, three, four years.”

Focus not on market share, it’s on deploying equivalent advanced tech to competitors

“Our focus isn’t on market share. Our focus is on making sure that we’ve deployed equivalent advanced technology, at least equivalent advanced technology to our competitor, so that we’re not incentivising others to play for market share. And we think that’s just really a prudent thing to do as managers of our business that we should make sure that we’re putting in place efficient manufacturing production capacity and that’s what we’re very, very focused on.”

PC weak but other segments should outstrip supply growth

“Relative to PCs, yes, it continues to be weak. We think maybe down mid single-digits for the year, DRAM content maybe up about 10% for the year. We’re not expecting any big things out of PC demand when we give you our view as the demand growth for the year across all the various segments. But once you get outside of PCs, growing obviously slower than overall market supply for DRAM, and mobile growing maybe right around the market supply for DRAM. You got all these other segments that we think will out script supply growth servers, automotive, etcetera, etcetera. So, generally speaking we do believe that in aggregate things are going to take care of themselves. ”

Micron FY 1Q16 Earnings Call Notes

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http://seekingalpha.com/insight/earnings-center/article/3772696-micron-technologys-mu-ceo-mark-durcan-on-q1-2016-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single

Mark Durcan

Can envision a future in which no additional DRAM wafer capacity is required

“based on current long-term outlook we foresee technology driven supply growth slowing and can envision a future in which no additional DRAM wafer capacity is required.”

Signs that channel inventories are leveling off in PC markets

“We think that the PC market, the signs are that channel inventories are leveling off a little bit better that was after the inventory was low. If you look at more specifically to our business DRAM inventory in the channel with the exception of one player, one larger player, DRAM inventory across our channel is pretty low. So the demand seems to be flowing through and replenish of inventory seems — that seems to be dynamic in the PC space. So that’s what behind our view of the world in terms of PC shipments. If you look at the data while not stellar growth certainly better than the first half of calendar year ’15.”

Miscellaneous Earnings Call Notes 11.19.15

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El Pollo’s (LOCO) CEO Steve Sather on Q3 2015 Results

We’ve seen reduced visits from some of our more price conscious consumers

“it was reduced the visits from some of our more price conscious consumers.”

It’s going to take some time for consumers to come back in and see these value initiatives

“I think it’s going to take some time to as consumers come in and see these value initiatives that are on the menu now as well as the service improvements that we’re making. And I think that’s just going to take more time to bring those consumers back. Let them experience that both on the price side and the service side and regain those customers.”

We’re fortunate that minimum wage headwind is being offset by lower commodity prices

“In terms of then managing pricing versus margins, I’m not ready to get into a full discussion about 2016 margins. One thing I will highlight is obviously we do have a minimum wage impact. Fortunate thing is on the commodity side, as we highlighted it worked 3% to 4% deflation, which were actually offset the minimum wage impact on our business”

Value conscious consumer is trading down

“when we did the research what we found is that we saw that the fact — the frequency has declined in our business, especially among we call more value conscious consumers. And we ask them where do you go instead of El Pollo Loco, it was pretty clear where they’re going, which was down to the lower end called the Taco Bells, In-N-Out Burgers and McDonalds.”

Burberry Group’s (BURBY) CEO Christopher Bailey on Q2 2015 Results

Impacted by weaker Chinese Consumer

“given the importance of the Chinese consumer to the luxury sector, our retail sales were affected by a slowdown in total Chinese spending. This reflected weakening consumer sentiment following the stock market turbulence and economic uncertainty over this summer.”

The US slowed markedly in the second quarter

“the U.S. slowed markedly in the second quarter. This reflected uneven demand from both the domestic and tourist consumer. The drivers here remain hard to read against a backdrop of a generally positive economic picture. However, we believe recent stock market volatility may have influenced local sentiment, and that the strong dollar discouraged tourist spend.”

The fundamentals of the luxury industry are changing. Growth is slowing

“current macroeconomic uncertainty, notwithstanding, there is no doubt that the fundamentals of the luxury industry are changing. Growth in Chinese luxury spending is moderating, competition in digital is intensifying, pricing leverage and space growth are tempering and customer behavior is rapidly evolving. For these reasons and more, sector growth is now forecast at just 1% to 2% in 2015 compared with 7% just a couple of years ago.”

Xinyuan Real Estate (XIN) Q3 2015 Results

Xinyuan Real Estate says that Chinese government policies continue to favorably impact business

“With respect to our operational effort on the government policies to continue to favorably impact our business. In the fourth quarter, we remain committed to driving performance of our shareholders with our quarterly cash dividend program. We will execute our sales purchase program as appropriate based on valuation.”

Bancolombia (CIB) Q3 2015 Results

Saw a significant depreciation of the Colombian peso against the US dollar

“During this period, we saw a significant depreciation of the Colombian peso against the U.S. dollar, which caused Bancolombia balance sheet to grow faster when presented in pesos. Let’s remember that the depreciation on an annual basis, it is 53%; and in a quarterly basis, it is 19%.”

Minimal impact though because operations are dollarized

“Nevertheless, despite every expression of assets and abilities into Colombian pesos, the impact in shareholders’ tangible equity is very small. This is due to the fact that all of our operations in Central America are dollarized and the assets that we have in U.S. dollars in Colombia are funded with liabilities in U.S. dollars as well.”

NIM was impacted by a raise in rates by the central bank

“A third topic that drove, and is driving the business environment today is of the monetary policy in Colombia. The Central Bank increased rates by 75 basis points over the last couple of months, which currently proceeds at a level of 5.25%. These increase coupled with our lower growth in deposits in the Colombian system and the higher stock of long-term debt caused the cost of funds to increase during the third quarter. As a result, we experienced a compression in the net interest margin during the quarter.”

Cresud’s (CRESY) CEO Alejandro Elsztain on Q1 2016 Results

Low commodity prices affecting our portfolios

“The low commodity prices are affecting all of our portfolio in all the region and there was a big drop that we saw on the prices mainly on the corn and soybean is effecting margins in all region too. ”

Good weather conditions for crops

“we can see how good weather condition in the region allows a positive start during this planting moment. Rainfall for this summer is above average as we’re going through a New Year. As we can see in the map Argentina presents good weather conditions in general particularly good in the Northeast of the country. In Brazil, even though the rainy season got delayed, the rains went back to the average levels along the normal soybean and corn productions.”

Copa Holdings SA (CPA) Pedro Heilbron on Q3 2015 Results

Latin America continues to be affected by slower economic growth

“Financial results for the quarter were in line with expectations, as Latin America continues to be affected by slower economic growth and weaker currencies. We expect the situation to continue in the short to medium term.”

We expect things to stabilize next year, but not expecting dramatic improvement

“we’re not building into our guidance an economic – an improvement in the economics of our region, we are expecting currencies to be stable, to stabilize, but we’re not building in a dramatic improvement to the economies.”

The Coca-Cola’s (KO) Management Discusses on Morgan Stanley Global Consumer & Retail
Sandy Douglas – President-Coca-Cola North America

Now expecting 4 point worse headwind from FX than expected on 3Q call

“Since our third quarter earnings call, the U.S. dollar has continued to strengthen. So while our business results are on track, we now expect a greater headwind from currency. After considering our hedge positions, current spot rates, and the cycling of our prior year rate, we now expect a seven point headwinds on net revenue and 11 point headwind on income before taxes for the quarter. Now, this is a four percentage point worse than the guidance that we provided.”

Consumers are moving to smaller packages which is higher revenue per volume

“The consumer is now changing. The consumer is moving to smaller packages. A 12-ounce can traded to a 7-ounce can is a 30% reduction in volume, but it’s an increase in revenue.”

TJX Companies’ (TJX) CEO Carol Meyrowitz on Q3 2016 Results

Carol Meyrowitz – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

We like competition

“there is always competition and our job is to be outrageous value every day and have a very unique eclectic mix and that’s what we strive for. We don’t harp on we move forward, we don’t harp on the competition, we like competition, we like when we are next two, I won’t name certain stores, but we’re fine with it, it brings traffic and our job is to do a better job.”

JPMorgan Chase’s (JPM) Management Presents at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Daniel Pinto – Chief Executive Officer, Corporate and Investment Bank

IN fixed income trading you need to have scale and diversification

“when I look at the fixed income business, I think that, in my view the key of success in fixed income is scale. It’s a relatively expensive business to run and if you have scale, you can make it profitable. The other component that is important to me is to have diversification because when you look at what has happened for the last couple of years, two, three years, one of the challenges in business was the rate business. This year is doing very well. So credit has done very well in the last few years even though the climate this year has a bit more challenge than before.”

I do believe the Fed will move in December

“I do believe that the Fed will move in December. I think that, as you look at where the market is pricing today, is probably pricing 75% probability of that were to happen. So I think that the impact in trading will be not very relevant at all. I think that the Fed is starting to cycle.”

M&A is still healthy. Companies have to show growth somehow

“The M&A process is still very healthy and will continue to be so in the sense that companies will – the S&P earnings growth this year is zero when you look at the evaluation. So you would argue that companies need to demonstrate some growth. At this level of growth, in the United States for the economy, there will have to be a bit more inorganic than organic, so therefore the M&A will continue as long as funding and capital is available. I think that funding and capital is available. I think that the risk appetite overall has dropped recently.”

Walgreens Boots Alliance’s (WBA) Management Presents at Morgan Stanley Global Consumer & Retail Brokers Conference
George Fairweather – Chief Financial Officer

This whole industry is going to see reimbursement pressure

“I think specialty like other parts of market will continue to come under reimbursement pressures. I don’t think there is any part of the market that’s going to escape. And this is just the way of – the way of our industry. The healthcare expenditure here in the United States is still a high proportion of GDP versus perhaps what you might see in Europe where I come from. And I believe that what we are going to see in our market is continued pressure on growth in healthcare expenditure. We will see pressures in various reimbursements and then what we have got to do is continue to drive efficiency, drive the front-end profitability.”

Micron Technology Presents at UBS Global Technology Brokers Conference
Ernie Maddock – Chief Financial Officer and Vice President, Finance

It would be pretty silly for the Chinese to try to compete in DRAM

“I would tell you that if you aren’t in the DRAM space, it’s kind of tough to imagine finding that a particularly appealing space to want to deploy a lot of capital and a lot of effort in and certainly as has been released in the press over the last couple of days, I think there’s been some commentary made about at least one particular Chinese entity having not being interested in DRAM per se. But it’s a business that is quite mature. It’s hard to envision that capacity expansion will be required based upon what we know of bit growth and where we think folks would be on the technology curve. And I think whether your perspective is that DRAM technology is very near the end of its technical capability or not quite to near the end. I think there is at least some amount of finite lifetime that certainly [indiscernible] if I were thinking about a rational economic investment in an industry, it wouldn’t be one that is in this state of maturity, because I think the opportunities for success there would be pretty low.”

Still in the very early stages of understanding the potential of 3D X Point

“because it is arguably the first new memory technology in 20 years, we’re having to learn how that market is going to develop. And of course, there is a relationship between how quickly the market develops, how quickly output ramps up and what happens to cost as a result of that. So there are still a lot of variables at pay that are quite different than the visibility, the understanding and comprehension we have of the NAND business or the DRAM business. So we are at the very early stages of learning here”

E-House’s (EJ) CEO Xin Zhou on Q3 2015 Results

Next year’s real estate market wont be much different from this year’s in China

“Overall, we don’t think next year’s real estate market will be very different from this year’s. The main theme is still efforts encouraged by the government to reduce inventory, reduce the overall level of inventory. And we continue to believe the Tier 1 and Tier 2 market overall will be healthier relative to the Tier 3 and Tier 4 business, which will continue to experience difficulties.”

Staples’ (SPLS) CEO Ron Sargent on Q3 2015 Results
Ron Sargent – Chairman and CEO

Markets softened across all categories early in the quarter

“Early in the quarter, the markets softened across all categories relative to the trends we had seen during the first half of 2015. We also saw deceleration in our contract print business as we cycled a couple of large customer wins from last year and continue to feel pressure from the ongoing digitization of our forms business.”

I don’t know if there’s been a lot of change in corporate spending behavior

“from my perspective, I don’t know if there’s been a lot of change or differences in corporate spending behavior. I know in general, technology has been weak and we have had great success in selling products beyond office supplies.”

Office supplies down to only 45% of sales mix

“You look at the total company mix, gosh, it wasn’t that long ago, we were probably 75% to 80% office supplies and today I think that number for the whole company is probably about 55% office supplies and 45% BOS or beyond office supplies, and obviously, as BOS continues to grow, at some time point those lines will cross and will be more non-office supplies than we are office supplies.”

Macy’s Management Presents at Morgan Stanley Global Consumer and Retail Broker Conference
Karen Hoguet – Chief Financial Officer

Clearly the consumer isn’t doing as badly as our industry

“clearly the consumer isn’t doing as badly as what my industry, our industry is doing, because of some of the shifting in spending patterns of the customer. But that didn’t change between Q2 and Q3.”

Top malls are still going to be fabulous shopping experiences

“one of the thought from the industry that I hear most often is what is the future of malls? And we kept hearing ourselves saying, we have absolutely no doubt that the top malls are going to continue to fabulous shopping experiences.”

Wells Fargo’s (WFC) Management at BAML conference
David Carroll – Senior EVP, Wealth and Investment Management

I’m bullish on financials

“Personally, I’m very overweight financials; I have it for a long time. But seriously, I’m pretty bullish on the sector. I think institutions are very positively positioned relative to raising rates. I think if we do get any kind of economic expansion, financials are going to be the beneficiary of it. But, we are better capitalized more liquid than we have been in a decade. I think in our case, given the breadth of our business mix, whatever parts of the economy, you are experiencing growth we are going to benefit from it.”

DOL proposals on fiduciary standard have unclear impact

“Again we don’t know. There is speculation that this could be the catalyst for the demise of 12b-1 fees and other types of network — networking fees. We don’t know. So it’s kind of pointless to speculate on it. At the end of the day, we have enough confidence in our platform and in our client relationships. We think we’ll be successful.”

Tractor Supply Company’s (TSCO) CEO Gregory Sandfort Presents at Morgan Stanley Global Consumer and Retail Brokers Conference

There’s a lot of things that can’t be delivered to a customer via drone

“Omnichannel for us is a growing business but there are a lot of things that can’t be sold on omnichannel and delivered to the customer through a drone or through an easy methodology. And some of these things are things that are unique to Tractor and we have to find ways to get it to our customer.”

Philip Morris International (PM) Management Presents at Morgan Stanley Global Consumer and Retail Brokers Conference
Jacek Olczak – Chief Financial Officer

Russian market responding to price increases reasonably well

“So far the total industry volumes are responding to the price increases within the sort of acceptable elasticity ranges, but we’ll have to – I think Russia will remain one of the least of the countries to watch the next year. I mean so far everything seems to be working well. There is some down trading, but with the price increases which we are taking there, I mean obviously you will have some down trading.”

No Macro environment that really concerns me

“Nothing today stands in the least which would worry me. There are few places to watch, but I think it’s pretty manageable going forward.”

General Motors’ (GM) CEO Mary Barra Presents at Barclays 2015 Global Automotive Conference

More change in this industry in the next 5 years than we’ve seen in the last 50

“I believe that we’ll see more change in this industry in the next five to 10 years than we’ve seen in the last 50, but we are not waiting to follow, we are not waiting to be disrupted, we are disrupting ourselves because with all these changes and challenges there is also opportunity whether it’s the strength in the U.S. market whether it’s the growth potential in China although China is moderating and even with the non-traditional entrants coming in the space when you look at the assets that we have and I’ll cover them as we go through the presentation, we feel we are well positioned.”

Will be launching the Bolt 200 mile range

“And we’re very excited about the next generation Volt which is the foundational technology that enables us to be able to be launching the Bolt, and the Bolt will go 200 miles on a charge, this really starts to change the equation in all electric, remember the Bolt is extended range electric vehicle because once you get to 200 miles you really get to a point for most drivers most days even with unexpected, you’re not going to create range anxiety”

You could make the argument that sharing cars will expand the market

“”when you look at sharing you can look at it and say, hi that’s going to be less cars sold. But you can also say it’s going to enable people either the use or people who have some impairment or at an age where they are not able to drive. And so I think it expands the market.”