The praise heaped on Schmidt in the article at 27829 and Hubbard's comment about NOVL's past performance not supporting an expectation of 40% growth lead me to offer this thought, which gave me the courage to commit to this stock: Schmidt is clearly no dummy. From his position at Sun, he had as good a vantage point as anyone in the world to evaluate Internet related opportunities. He wasn't forced out of Sun, he left to seek his own fortune. I assume he did his due diligence, and the best vehicle he could come up with was --- NOVL.
I'm no propeller head, so I don't pretend to have a deep understanding of the strategic importance of directories, but Schmidt saw that NOVL had assets that could be tremendously valuable if they were deployed in the build-out of the Internet, and I'm quite happy to tag along. And, looking at the example of what Gerstner has achieved at IBM, the value that can be unlocked by a smart, outsider strategic thinking CEO is substantial.
Having said all that, if someone closer to the business could give me some guidance on how revenue streams are to be generated from the various directory products, comparable to the "pro formas" analysts work up for pharm co's on their drugs in FDA trials (laced with big assumptions, admittedly), I would be very appreciative. |
