Preston:
I'm aware of ATI's potential as a good investment and do
realize that the analysts who see the stock as undervalued
may certainly be correct. The international equity stakes,
though, are all minority stakes and at this time ATI has to
spend a fortune to expand and upgrade and if these "cellular
wars" come to pass, the pricing pressure may cause difficulty
in recouping those infrastructure investments.
As far as GTE goes, I never said it wasn't good to its shareholders:
just the opposite, as a matter of fact. Over the last two years
it's gone from the twenties to the forties and has paid handsome
dividends all that time. Also, GTE may very well be one of the
most undervalued telco stocks since it is the only one that can
really offer a full complement of service in both local and long
distance right now. GTE is no slouch when it comes to taking
advantage of that position.
However, you must realize that GTE does leave something to be
desired in the service department--they've certainly been getting
enough public press about that and the company is very thin-skinned
about addressing any criticisms. (Note that GTE filed a lawsuit
over AT&T's "barking dogs" commercials which most people thought
were pretty funny.) Employee relations are said to
be "iffy" at this time and morale is not so good--talk to some
GTE employees about that and they'll shed some light since I've
found they're always eager to extrapolate.
At any rate, I clarified all those suppositions with the fact that
those feelings are just an opinion and, after all, that's what SI
is: a forum for opinions.
And, lastly, I further said that I don't believe any of these telco
stocks are bad long-term investments, just that some of them appear
to be more timely than others; IMO and that of many other analysts
besides the ones you mentioned, T and ATI are not timely.
A good reference for "timeliness" can be found in Value Line's
updates; if you don't subscribe to it, most libraries have it. |
