Quote Originally Posted by FghtinIrshNvrDi View Post
I'm sorry, but I don't think you know what you're talking about. One of the most 'asset light' companies in the world (in proportion to gross revenue) is wal-mart. You're telling me thier 'just in time' inventory system is a bad idea? Isn't that what revolutionized the japanese car industry in the mid 20th century? This type of inventory is incredibly efficient and can save companies a lot of money. Business students are taught that inventory is bad, and it is. If you have it, you may as well have lost the money until it is sold. It's heavy, it depreciates, and it clogs up the business structure.

He's talking about inventory systems and trying to not sit on chips that depreciate every minute they're in their posession.

Ryan
Heh. Obviously you didn't listen to the conference call, and have no idea whatsoever what you are talking about. Here is a link to the transcript of the conference call.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/32901

Here are a bunch of quotes from Hector himself during that CC making it blindingly obvious what he is talking about:

As part of that, one of the things that has become pretty clear in our experience, we have had now for a number of years had some experience in partnering with people such as, for example, IBM in joint development programs. That has started a lot about how you can do some asset light strategies, since we did not have to build an R&D laboratory to do that.

We have had also an experience now for a number of years with some of our friends in the foundry business, and in particular the charter semiconductor. We have learned a lot of that.

Through the acquisition of ATI, we now have a perspective into a very asset light model that we are pretty excited about learning more and more about it. When we look at all these things, we see a tremendous opportunity for us to really do something different going forward, but it’s unique for us.

I think, for example, what Texas Instruments has done, as you said, is very good for them and is uniquely tailored for what they do. Whatever we do is going to have to be very uniquely tailored for us, because we have to be on one hand, in the workstation super computer environment at the leading, bleeding edge of technology, but on the entry level part of products is not quite as necessary.

I think we are in a unique segment in the industry, the microprocessor industry where an asset light model may require a considerably different look and feel that you might recognize when you look at somebody like Texas Instruments.
It coves a whole gamut of opportunities, from everything like I mentioned earlier, we already have a joint development agreement with IBM which we view that as an asset light strategy from the point of view that we do not have to build an R&D facility, and all the way in to any aspect of the rest of the work that we do.
and reduce our capital intensity by exploring deeply more asset light business models in order to fully execute our plan.
Here he is talking about cutting down on capital investments and R&D through ousourcing. He mentioned the partnership with IBM (where they have been oursourcing their process R&D), and the partnership with Chartered (where they have been oursourcing their production), and talking about making themselves resemble Texas Instruments more (which just announced they were exiting process development and going to go totally fabless). Nothing whatsoever about inventories or anything you were talking about.