Cypress Semiconductor Annual Shareholder Meeting (2008)

Cypress Semiconductor (CY) runs its meeting professionally. Doors are closed after the meeting time, although a security guard allowed me to enter. Two employees check your proxy card, along with your ID, and write out a name tag before letting you in. CY gave away a nice bag this year to all attending shareholders. Also, the food spread was more than your typical coffee and cut fruit--it was a smallish buffet, with some shish kabob and several selections of cheese and whole fruits. In the back of the room, there are several displays about how CY's technology is used in applications as diverse as timers and solar panels.

CY has one billion dollars in cash-that's the first thing I noticed from its presentation. CY is headed by an engineer (T.J. Rodgers), and he gave us a lecture on how CY's technology is more efficient and creative than its competitors. For example, his PSoC, or Programmable System on a Chip, allows companies to move components on a reference design board to get the result they want. In addition, the PCBs do not require the use of a Cypress proprietary IC chip, allowing more flexibility. By being more flexible about the chips necessary for its software and design boards, CY may be able to charge for its boards and software at some point in the future. In contrast, its competitors typically give away their boards and software because they are only functional with the companies' own IC chip, where the company plans on making sales and profits. CY, however, works with several different companies, including NOK and MOT, which use Cypress chips in some of their phones. With respect to "sideloading," which includes the task of uploading movies or content onto a phone using a USB device, I thought it was interesting that the RIMM and MOT phones were currently among the fastest, while the Sony ERIC phone was the slowest. Apple's iPhone speed was in between.

CY's PSoC design may also be more environmentally friendly, because fewer boards and components are necessary to accomplish several different tasks. The presentation included showing us how one such board could create several different kinds of light in different intensities, all from one board. (We were treated to a fun, small-scale Disney Fantasia show, where the CEO, who was holding a rectangular 8 watts LED light, would tell an associate across the room, "Blue! Now turn it up [in intensity]. Now green. Now white." You get the picture.)

This is where it gets interesting. CY's technology encourages the use of LED lights, which last longer and use less power, and are therefore more environmentally friendly. There are three types of lights: LED, CFL (compact fluorescent), and INCAND (incandescent), in order of most environmentally friendly to least. The LED light required the most upfront investment--around 12 to 20 dollars--but over its life of multiple years, sometimes even as long as 17 years, the buyer would spend less because electricity bills would be lower. Therefore, while the INCAND bulb only cost around 4 dollars initially, it actually cost 300 dollars more than the LED light over the same period of time because of the extra "juice" it requires. The CFL was in between, but the LED light was clearly superior when lifetime costs, not just initial costs, were factored in. The lesson I took was to try to find LED lights whenever possible, despite the higher upfront cost.

However, despite this new angle and method of designing semiconductors, the charts showed that semiconductor sales were decreasing and have been declining for quite some time. Most of CY's growth comes from its earlier acquisition of Sunpower, a solar panel technology company. [Update: CY has spun off Sunpower.] CY focused on the fact that its solar panels are far more efficient than its competitors, especially those using "thin film" or "conventional" solar panels. CY also mentioned that it was going to present the tax consequences of spinning off its Sunpower company to shareholders to the Board that same day.

I was very impressed with the presentation and this company. Few companies present themselves so professionally and are on the cutting edge of innovation.

Top 4 Traits for Success

The author of http://www.businesspundit.com/ posted this shorthand list of traits designed for success:

1) the ability to postpone short-term gain for a greater long-term reward;
2) optimism;
3) ability to deal with stress; and
4) initiative.

The discussion referenced whether IQ was genetic or learned, and the author's point was that even large differences in IQ did not matter in the modern world as much as the four traits above. I have always said that delayed self-gratification is extremely important to success, but with so many higher paying careers involving an understanding of mathematics, an ability or willingness to understand mathematics will also be important. As technology slowly eliminates the need for various service careers, those sectors will have to unionize or determine how to move the workers who are displaced into more productive positions. Yet, no IQ test can pinpoint desire (#4 above), which can overcome many inherent flaws.

Angry Bear

Mr. Houghton has published a fascinating piece on the cost of living in different cities:

http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2008/05/spacial-price-index.html

(This article references http://www.bea.gov/papers/pdf/aten_estimates_state_metro_2005.pdf)

Who wrote this? You'll be surprised...

"The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit...But the fact is that there are now more claims outstanding than real assets...In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value...Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth."

It's not Ron Paul. But it is another well-known libertarian, speaking in 1966.

Speaking of changing values, "Seanbaby," a local columnist for a free San Jose local magazine, writes a humorous column. This is from his most recent column: "What our parents wouldn't dream of doing until they were married and strapped into safety equipment is how children say hi to each other today. Hell, I couldn't believe what 15-year-olds did when I was 16. We're less than a generation away from Baby Gap selling thong panties." (The Wave, Vol. 8, Issue 10) Absolutely hilarious.

SIRF Meeting --Canceled

When I went to the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose to attend the SIRF shareholder meeting, three people informed me that the meeting had been re-scheduled to August 19, 2008. Apparently, because SIRF is a Delaware corporation, the meeting has to be done within a strict time period after providing notice to shareholders of record, and SIRF had the record date a few days too early. They wouldn't tell me what law firm failed to do the research and due diligence, but at least I learned some new tidbits on incorporating in Delaware.

I won't be able to attend the upcoming Google shareholder meeting, but I did read the annual report and letter from Larry Page. It's not a Warren Buffet letter, i.e., a comprehensive letter that touches on national and international issues as well as investing, but it's pretty darn good. I wouldn't mind hanging out with Mr. Page, based on the tone and enthusiasm he seems to have.

Most interesting in Google's annual report are the risk factors, which all annual reports have, but Google's risks seem more detailed and realistic than other reports. Google talks about more than just the IP and legal risks commonly found in other company reports. Google talks about how anti-spamming filters, ad blocking software, and copyright protections may affect its ability to find data. Google struck me as moving towards the direction of "free information" in an era where everyone is trying to protect information and make it more onerous to copy anything online. Google also listed a risk factor of not being able to control bandwidth providers and data centers, meaning that Google's growth is ultimately reliant, like most online companies, on the Baby Bells and other internet service companies to ensure that consumers get internet access at a reasonable cost. This reliance struck me as somewhat odd, because I thought I heard a while back that Google had purchased some wireless spectrum in an government auction, but perhaps I am confusing two different issues. Google also reiterated its anti-dividend philosophy.

I will be going to Wesco's shareholder meeting tomorrow in Pasadena to see Buffett's right-hand man, Charlie Munger. The Berkshire Hathaway meeting is over in Omaha, and Mr. Munger is back in California.

SJ Mercury News: Personnel Costs = 2/3 of City Budget

The San Jose Mercury News has published on its front page the scandal that has been occurring local government--see April 15, 2008, "$200,000 club." The article by John Woolfolk states, "Personnel costs [salaries and benefits] account for two-thirds of the city's operating budget, which has been plagued by multimillion-dollar deficits...salaries have grown 38 percent..."

So 2/3 of the taxes we pay that go to the city get put into government workers' pockets. What happened to spending money on private citizens and their children by buying them books, computers, new classrooms, etc.? If we use this money wisely, perhaps we can give every single high school student a laptop at school that is locked to a desk, with different passwords for different students to use. Also, why not implement high-tech security systems to protect children?

There ought to be a law requiring that any government salary increase be voter-approved above certain numbers, say, $99,000, or anything that is more than the consumer price index (CPI) (the downside to setting a specific percentage like a 5% annual target is that by doing so, we'll probably guarantee annual raises of 4.99%). Let us know what we're paying for with our own money, or we'll be hostage to government unions, who seem to increase their salaries year after year, without regard for budgetary constraints.

Five Short Blasts, by Pete Murphy

Five Short Blasts (Open Window Publishing, Clarkston, MI (2007)) is a very interesting economic book from a non-economist. Mr. Murphy is actually a former engineer who was laid off and began studying economics on his own. His book is well-researched and uses his technical background to analyze charts and statistics from several government websites. His major points are these:

1. We need to reduce population and immigration, even legal and family-based immigration, to have a better quality of life.

2. Reducing population would allow us to preserve more of the environment and bring us closer to nature.

3. We should have higher tariffs on products from densely-populated countries.

4. The more densely populated we become, the less we are able to afford and buy larger products; larger products such as cars and boats include major commodities, such as timber, steel, and other items that require more processing or more refining; the nature of the materials put into heavier and larger consumer items requires more people and therefore more jobs; thus, as we become densely populated and live in smaller spaces, our ability to buy larger items diminishes, causing a loss of jobs, especially in manufacturing. [This is his unique point--not too many economists have explored the relationship between consumption of heavier, larger items and a reduction in available land.]

5. When less densely populated countries trade with densely populated countries, the less populated country always loses, because the higher population in the other country creates more competition and therefore lower wages, thereby bringing down the standards of the less dense nation. [In other words, Murphy doesn't believe in Ricardo's "comparative advantage" principle.]

6. On page 189, Murphy comes up with a great idea to preserve our food supply--he says that rather than rely on imports or an unstable supply of immigrant workers, we should establish a "Farm Corps," like the Peace Corps, "for high school and college students to earn decent wages working the fields during the summer." I think this might actually work, assuming the wages were high enough to attract at least high school students. I'm not so sure college students would be involved, unless there was some loan forgiveness included. I am also skeptical of yet another farm subsidy program, but this one seems more innocuous than paying farmers not to grow food.

Having summarized Murphy's ideas, his book suffers from a fatal flaw: he doesn't account for poorer nations ever becoming affluent or getting a middle class. If only 10% of the Chinese population enters the ranks of the middle class, that's 120 million people who can buy our products and who might appreciate the higher value and safety that they provide in a more regulated environment. Murphy seems to think that even as these countries get more dollars to spend, they will all somehow continue to remain permanently poor. His thinking is that because there is a much higher supply of labor in more densely populated countries, there will always be more people willing to work for meager wages, so a country like the U.S. can never really be an equal trading partner with a country like China or India. But again, the entire country doesn't have to get rich in order to balance the trade deficit--if only 20% become middle class, that's enough to create a population that will hopefully want to buy iPhones and Dell laptops and Brooks Brothers suits.

That's another flaw in Murphy's thinking--even if larger items become less attractive as available land decreases, there are plenty of high margin products that are in demand, such as iPhones. The real problem is the regulatory environment in less developed countries, which hurt U.S. revenue by not protecting IP rights. That issue has nothing to do with population.

Also, the U.S. isn't anywhere near optimal population yet--almost the entire Midwest needs more population, not less, and is projected to lose even more population in coming years. With the Medicare deficit, we need more immigrants, not fewer, to help support these entitlement programs. The key issue is what kind of immigrants we want, and how to get immigrants who are law-abiding and who will pay taxes. So far, the family-based and company-based programs have seemed to work just fine in attracting hard-working immigrants. Yet, Murphy wants to reduce almost all immigration, even legal immigration.

Overall, Murphy has a unique perspective by including demographics with an economic analysis. If you want to read a Malthusian who laments the good old days, when lines were short and people could drive easily on sparsely populated roads on cheaper gas, you'll love Murphy's book. If, however, you believe that this country needs more people to cover the entitlement programs and debt we've run up, and that we're not densely populated yet, you might not be converted to his ideas. Yet, his overall point is correct--the smaller the population, the more you can control growth in a steady progression that leaves fewer people behind. But if that's the main goal, there are other ways of achieving it.

I'm not sure if job displacement and income inequality can be solved by changing immigration or population rather than analyzing how to further women's rights. If you really want to reduce population and reduce the trade deficits between countries, you have to give women jobs and contraception in more densely populated countries. Countries that promote a woman's right to work provide more options for women, who then have access to more money and more power, and usually choose to have fewer children. This creates two benefits: one, the brains of about half of the population get utilized more in such countries, leading to more stability; and two, by having fewer kids and another income, families can invest more in their children, which makes society more stable. To his credit, Murphy makes the same point I do about limiting births by talking about contraception and education at the end of his book, where he also talks about his Catholic faith. But he continues to stick to his idea that if we want to have a better quality of life, we need to take affirmative steps to reduce population by limiting immigration. See page 198: "[Y]ou only have three choices when addressing immigration: a) balance it with emigration, b) tell U.S. citizens they can have fewer children in order to make room for immigrants, or c) drive the death rate higher. The first of these is the only logical choice." In that context, Murphy is clearly anti-immigrant, but in true engineer form: "I know that the things I've proposed may sound like the rantings of a xenophobic madman.. [But] [i]t's a simple matter of math and the need to stabilize our population." That's probably not the right path to take in an era of massive public debt. Providing more jobs and funds to women in all countries, especially less developed countries, would reduce population more effectively. Still, you have to give Murphy credit for trying to sound five warning blasts about what he feels is the denigration of the way of life he used to know, when this country was smaller, more manageable, and seemingly less harsh to its citizens.