Micron Technology Inc vice-president of corporate affairs Kipp Bedard had to tell the conference that Wall Street estimates of flat to slightly higher revenues for the company’s fiscal first quarter to last month over the previous, fiscal fourth, quarter were reasonable. He said that the sequential growth in memory bits shipped, a key measure of volume for the chip maker, was in the 20% to 25% range for the first quarter, above the company’s initial projection of bit growth in the low teens. He declined to project financial results for the first quarter, but Bedard said the company’s balance sheet is strong. As for the company’s systems manufacturer, Micron Electronics Inc, chairman and chief executive Joseph Daltoso said the company remains comfortable with analyst estimates for its first quarter to end-November, but thought it could have done better. He said the company had an aggressive dual-processor Pentium Pro offering, but that despite a favorable allocation of Pentium Pro microprocessors from Intel Corp it had sold out of these quickly and could not obtain more of the chips, which hurt the quarterly results. Intel has told the company that it should be able to meet demand for the top-end Pentium Pro by around the first of the year.
