Hi Joe...(1) Here are my comments and suggestions:
Let it me start by saying that your purpose and mine are one and the same: we want to make money on our investment. Further, I don't believe that you distorted my message as Irene alluded to. However, your efforts to oust the BOD and Marengi are radical, and it could cause more harm than good. Yes, you got some media coverage, but it will die down and nothing will happen.
Let's start from the beginning, you jumped on Calpers media coverage and called for the oust of the BOD and Marengi. However, my understanding is that Calpers had a meeting with Novell last October and they will not file any action against Novell. Here is what I read concerning this matter:
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PC Week
February 13, 1997 6:30 PM ET
Marengi says Novell has $1B to
put in play
By Renee Deger
From the article
CalPERS spokesman Brad Pacheco said the pension fund has
no plans to file any actions against Novell unless the company
fails to take steps to remedy its lagging position.
pcweek.com
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PC Week
February 13, 1997 11:00 AM ET
Novell draws ire of major
pension fund
By Renee Deger
From the article:
At the same time, pension lawyers conceded after a meeting
last October that independent directors of the company were
doing "all we could expect them to do," said Pacheco.
At least one analyst took issue with the pension fund's censure.
"We believe there is still a lot to be done, but we are more
pleased with the company's direction right now than a year
ago," said Tim Witt, an analyst with Olde Discount, in Detroit.
pcweek.com
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What I get from these articles is that Calpers is satisfied with the actions taken by the BOD. Further, I am in agreement with the opinion expressed by Tim Witt of Olde Discount. Now, you are soliciting shares to pledge them to Calpers, WAIS, and Amex, and these people didn't provide us with any information. At the time the Calpers thing came up last week, I asked EKS to provide us with some info about the discussions which took place between Calpers and Novell, but nothing happened. Do you know what I think?. I think these organizations believe we are a bunch of hot headed small investors who don't know what we are doing. However, I do believe that we, as a group, know
collectively more about Novell than these organizations.
Based on what I know right now, I do believe that Novell is on the verge of a turn-around ,if not in one already, because of the following reasons (taken from my Post # 7566, more or less):
1. Q4-96 results were good. Revenues increased sequentially by 5% after 5 quarters of declining revenues and their statement to the analysts in the last conference call to expect sequential increase in revenues and earnings.
2. Current management actions have been encouraging
- I have not read any bad reviews about Marengi or other top executives. Also, I do believe that Marengi is result oriented and his style of being an enforcer is needed to put this company on track again. Further, a Morgan Stanely analysts told us that he was impressed with Denice Gibson and she has everything under control.
- Products are released on time, with the exception of the E-commerce server which was delayed 5-6 months. However, a positive action was taken because of this delay where some people got fired which tells all others that they mean business.
- Immediate response to buggy products: GroupWise 5.1 is about to be released after 5.0 was found to have bugs.
- Opening of NDS for OEMs and developers
- Tying bonus to the stock performance.
- Streamline the NEST development and direct the effort towards revenue generation.
- Excellent reviews of Kayak (I don't understand your statement that you don't believe positive articles anymore).
- Also, I think there are several new products in the pipeline which they are not talking about much such that they don't alert the competition. For example this thing about the Z-Files seems significant.
3. The stock action since the low of $8 3/4 on 10/31/96 has been positive. Further, this the first since May 1995 that the stock didn't set a new low after the quarterly results were announced.
4. Two money manager have indicated recently that the stock is under-valued. This and Tim Witt's comments tell me that the pundits on the Street started to gain confidence in the current management.
5. Positive comments by Frankenburg about IntranetWare and GroupWise in his latest interview in Network World.
6. You told us the word is: Q1 EPS is $.21 and revenues are above 400M. But we don't know how much confidence you have in these numbers. I would be happy with 65M in earnings ($.19 EPS) and 403M in revenues (Steve Fancy, don't expect $.25 EPS, it won't happen).
As you well remember last August when Q3-96 results were announced I was very upset and I indicated that I will wait for one more quarter and if they don't perform, then I'm out. Today, I feel much better about this investment than I have ever felt before because of the things I discussed above. Should Q1 results confirm this feeling, then why do we want to rock the boat right now?.
read on.... |
