<<I believe we have a seriously undervalued equity on our hands.>>
I think most of us tend to agree on this comment. IMO, it is really hard to be patient when you've made an investment in an exciting company, yet the market is slow to respond to the story that is unfolding. Obviously, Ampex is brimming with potential, but I can see where investors are being somewhat cautious and are awaiting further developments before jumping in.
Before I made the plunge (in a serious way!), I had to ask myself whether or not Ampex would be able to compete against the giants (IBM & Sony) in the industry for a piece of the digitial storage market, or whether there would even be a market for keepered media. I have confidence that the DST products will do well for many reasons, but I believe investors will want to see some hard facts (increasing orders/sales) before getting too excited about this area. For KM, the market is still probably wondering how much this will be worth to Ampex. It seems pretty obvious that Ampex is pursuing the commercialization of keepered media products, and that they have alot of confidence in this area, but it seems investors aren't going to react until they have a solid basis for valuing this business (a major contract getting signed).
Anyway, I guess we just have to wait for the story to continue to unfold.
Also, on CNBC this morning, they interviewed the head of the Network PC division of IBM (sorry I don't remember his name). He made a very good argument about how the Network PC, with its very basic and inexpensive PC components, have much greater advantage over a pure Network Computer. Their research has shown that customers want to keep the ability to run their own, often times custom applications, as well as having access to the Internet. This supports the comment made in an earlier post about why the more mature inductive head technology (that KM definitely works with) won't be so quickly replaced by newer MR head technology. And it supports Ampex's comment in their 3Q 10Q about why they believe "the major potential benefit of keepered media would be to permit the attainment of leading edge performance at a lower cost than would be possible using alternative technologies, and that "lower disk drive component costs may be especially critical in the high-volume, low price market segment for desk top disk drives, in which mfrs gross profit margins are relatively low".
Best of luck to all!
--Wayne-- |
