Elmo. Thanks. ... AHA!!!!!! Very interesting. I wonder what, if any
the connections to this story (below), and the article in PC WEEK today. Note, I found it interesting that this story (PC WEEK) on NOVELL and NETSCAPE was ONLY printed in PC WEEK. I couldn't find it anywhere else. Did anyone else find it "anywhere else". Hmmm......
Now, the Annual Meeting is postponed... Hmmmmm.... The plot thickens.
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Netscape Stock At All-Time Low
(03/17/97; 8:30 a.m. EST)
By Edward F. Moltzen, Computer Resellers News
NEW YORK -- With Netscape's stock at an all-time low, and its
competitive wars getting nastier and more personal, the wunderkind
company may be entering a critical period in its short history.
As of the beginning of last week, Netscape Communications, which
was once the highest of the high-flying Internet IPOs when its price was
a split-adjusted $87 per share, was trading at $26.50.
That meant the company's market capitalization was about $2.3 billion
and falling.
This year, Netscape said it is hoping to take on IBM's Lotus subsidiary
in the lucrative collaborative computing market when Netscape's
long-awaited Communicator product goes into general availability.
Although there has been a delay in the release of Communicator, and
even though its stock price has been dropping, Netscape has received
very little criticism from Wall Street.
"Assuming [Netscape] can execute through the technical, marketing
and support challenges of the new products in the next two quarters,
we believe Netscape will be in the strongest product position in its
short history by the second half of 1997," said a report from Goldman
Sachs & Co., New York.
However, the brokerage house also acknowledged there could be
some bumps in the future road.
"Near-term volatility should be expected due to the scarcity of
comparable Internet companies, limited float, competitive concerns and
high investor interest in the Internet," Goldman Sachs said.
The brokerage has maintained Netscape on its "recommended" list.
And IBM, while maintaining that Lotus' products are better, has grown
nervous about Netscape's threat this year, despite the company's
misfirings. But a few have publicly put the spotlight on what they say
are those very misfirings.
Earlier in the year, Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst Bruce Smith wrote a
critical report on Netscape, saying he learned the company frantically
closed much of its business in the last week of the year to barely keep
up with Wall Street estimates.
Netscape denied it, although it did barely make its numbers for the
fourth quarter of 1996.
Meanwhile, the warring between Netscape and Lotus executives over
everything from the definition of replication to product cost analyses has
grown personal between executives at the two companies.
Ray Ozzie, who developed Lotus' centerpiece Notes technology,
recently poked fun at Marc Andreessen, the developer given credit for
creating Netscape's centerpiece Navigator technology.
During the past year, Andreessen's own holdings in Netscape have
gone from a high valuation of $112.6 million to $39.8 million.
James Clark, the chairman of Netscape, has seen his holdings drop to
$422 million from $1.2 billion in stock, while James Barksdale,
Netscape's chief executive, has watched the value of his shares in the
company fall to $140 million, from a high of $397 million, during the
past 52 weeks.
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Poor, poor Netscape. Why, it's now gone from the darling (just like Novell) to almost, (almost) without a prom date. Connections here?
Hmmmmm...... |
