OR, as Redchip put it, "the best stocks to own are growth companies disguised as turnarounds at value stock prices", and then went to include AXC in the select list of companies which meet all three categories! It's still a steal at 10, considering an imminent announcement will probably double that, and then could climb steadily on from there over the next couple years. Wish I'd been bold when it intrigued me at below $2!, instead of waiting.
Called AXC investor relations yesterday with some questions but got little new info, but here goes:
What's institutional ownership now? Nobody owns over 5%, since they'd have to file a sec report, which we'd then know, and you could find out at www.sec.gov. Other than that I don't know.
What's insider ownership? About 19% after Bramson's last purchase in October
AXC keeps referring to the big 7 drive manufacturers (after HP dropped out this year). Who are they, I'm only aware of about 5?
1)Seagate
2)Connor(AXC counted them as seperate, even tho Seagate bought em out)
3)Maxtor, owned by Hyundai
4)Western Digital
5)Quantum
6)IBM, along with Seagate, by far the biggest disk drive makers
7)??? she didn't know. I wonder if it's Micropolis, owned by Singapore govt, or a Japanese manufacturer?
So are these the WORLD'S biggest and only drive manufacturers, or are they just USA's biggest and best? These are the world's biggest, who sell the majority of disk drives the whole world over.
What about the Japanese? Do they have a huge presence worldwide in disk drive manufacturing? Not that I know of. I'm not aware the Japanese make a lot of disk drives.
How could AXC really coat every media in teh world, if volumes are approaching 150M in a year or so? Do you intend to license it, or manufacture it yourself? Obviously those negotiations are ongoing. We'd prefer to not license it, but to buy media from Stormedia, IBM and others, coat it in our own factories, and then sell it to the disk drive companies as a value added product. But all those issues are being negotiated over now.
So the process is buying from the media companies, coating it AXC's way, then selling to drive companies? That's correct.
By then I'd run out of questions. Am still puzzled tho by some answers, maybe some of you much more knowledgeable techies out there can help. Are the Japanese a big captive maker of disk drives? Do Hitachi, NEC, Mitsubishi, whoever else there is, make their own disk drives, and if so, are they minor world players?
How could AXC possibly have every media platter in the world go through their doors? so is licensing a given, at least in part?
Gus, maybe you can help us out, you seem to be in the know about a lot of these technical things. I'm more familiar with market action and reaction than the inner workings of hard drives. help! |
