More Wall St. Questions On Vista

According to Barron’s, research firm ThinkEquity does not think that Microsoft (MSFT) Vista sales are going very well. The firm put it this way: “We believe Vista is a disaster.” ThinkEquity thingks the suction from this will also take down AMD (AMD) and Dell (DELL) in the vortex.

Perhaps Wall St. is missing the message. Microsoft was up about 2% today. It has actually been moving up for several days now and is about to reclaim the $28 level. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, has said that he thinks investor expectations for Vista have been aggressive and that helped step MSFT’s price down last month.

So far, however, there is no significant concern that the sky is falling over at Microsoft.

AMD is unlikely to do well even if Vista sales are OK. The stock is at its 52-week low and it is not on concern about unit sales. No, Wall St. hates the fact that AMD had to give up a huge number of margin points to stay in a market share war with Intel (INTC). AMD now trades at 1.4x sales compared to Intel at 3.1x. AMD is a dog, but, unless it has to raise money to stay in business, the stock is unlikely to go much lower. The definition of "cheap" in the dictionary has the AMD logo next to it.

Dell (DELL) is another stock that does not offer investors very much, but it would appear that the company could come up with more good news than bad. Michael Dell has already said that it will take several quarters to move the company back into any kind of working order. Falling chip prices could help margins. And, if the company cuts costs through lay-offs, it is likely that the stock might get a little bounce.

Much of the tech landscape is a disaster now. It is not likely to become more so.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.