Industry Pulse - Jan '07

* Flextronics is laying off workers at the Chateaudon plant (France) due to weaker demand from Nortel. Flextronics also announced a deal with Hewlett-Packard to license HP's image processing technology for mobile camera phones which will allow users to improve image quality to match that used in digital still cameras.

* Celestica recently updates guidance from 4Q06. Essentially, the Company cited inventory provisions from Mexico operations. The challenging Mexico operations continue to weigh on the tier-1 contract manufacturer. Meanwhile, Craig Mulhauser recently took over as CEO. He has is challenges ahead of him as there is some belief in industry part of Celestica's overall trend in disappointing earnings is also related to market losses as Juniper Networks; Cisco, and Lucent have strengthened their contract manufacturing outsourcing relationships: Juniper Networks > Flextronics, Cisco > Flextronics and Jabil and, Lucent > Solectron.

* Nam Tai Electronics announced a new CEO. Mr. Warren Lee was a non-executive director at one of Nam Tai's subsidiaries. Prior to this, Mr. Lee was an investment banker. Nam Tai has stated intentions of expanding its business. The Company has positive free cash flow and a strong balance sheet. Ms. Patinda Lei, the previous CEO, is moving back to the Company's Zastron subsidiary where she was successful with her Japanese and marketing background. Nam Tai is also currently looking for a new CFO

* Plexus continues to execute well. Most business segments have performed as expected. Wireless and wireline are sequentially higher; industrial capital equipment and high-end computing are still soft and, medical is slightly lower. Military business for fiscal '07 is poised to probably match performance similar to fiscal '06.

* Benchmark Electronics recently announced its CFO, Ms. Gayla Delly, was promoted to president of the Company. Ms. Delly served as Benchmark's CFO since 2001 and has been with Benchmark since 1996. Donald Adam, previously vice president and corporate controller for Benchmark, will assume the CFO position. Cary Fu remains Benchmark's CEO.

VentureOutsource.com, January 2007