CNBC TYranscript continued.
>>Mr. Edwards, I'm curious.. uh, I've heard some reports, and I was just wondering whether you could tell me a yes or no here, have insiders such as yourself or any top management engaged in any transactions which would ostensibly represent a sale of the stock or hedging what is your position through perhaps equity swaps?
KIM EDWARDS:
Not that I'm aware of, no.
DAVID FABER:
And finally, my last question here, uh, your stock has created a frenzy on the internet, and perhaps will go down as sort of the test case of people's capitalism if you will, or the first in the sense of information being exchanged on services like America Online and such, but it also created a frenzy, alot of people call it a cult in some ways. Does that bother you at all?
KIM EDWARDS:
Well, let's step back a second. We introduced the world's first 150 dollar insurance for your hard drive, the world's first affordable storage solution, the Zip drive at 199 bucks, $14.95, 100 megabyte disks, and again the world's first high-end unit for the power users, with 100 dollar gigabyte cartridges. That's what's behind this is the products, and obviously we've been very successful because the amount of research we've done in the market place itself.
DAVID FABER:
But you're happy about the fact that your company on the Motley Fool chat room on AOL gets more conversations and more entrants perhaps than any other company in this country, you think that's a good thing?
KIM EDWARDS:
What we're happy about is the fact that there's a wide following that believes in our product, and talks about them and there usability going forward. That's what we're happy about.
MARK HAINES:
Mr. Edwards, one more geek question here...techno-geek question here. Have you made a bet-the-company type of gamble in terms of backward compatibility, with the 1.44 floppy, what if the OEMs come along and say, "Look, we just want something like this, and your competitors are working on an item that would be backward compatible." Have you bet the company that that's not going to happen?
KIM EDWARDS:
Mark, I think the time we bet the company was when we decided to call Bernoulli, our old technology ugly and really cannibalize it with Zip and Jaz. Going forward, I think as you know all software today is distributed on CD-ROMs, the floppy itself is just simply too small anymore or too slow. So, from that context, I don't know the question relative to betting the company, relative to a technology that's now obsolete.
MARK HAINES:
Alright, not an issue to you. Ok, thank you very much, fair enough.
KIM EDWARDS:
Thank you, Mark.
MARK HAINES:
Thank you! Kim Edwards, President and CEO of Iomega, joined us live
from Salt Lake City, Utah, answered all the questions and hopefully
now we've generated a little light about this issue.. as well as some
heat. <<
Ken |
