Erwin,
Regarding upbeat cc calls, I seem to remember more cc that I consider the management as being unprepared. Many questions, especially when it came to specifics, were unanswered either because they do not want to answer or simply do not have the numbers.
This conference call was a big change, for the better.
I am increasingly inclined to think that Wind will be acquired in the near future. Fiddler is a great visionary and visionaries do not make good CEOs usually - and the past has proved it. Abelman made a tremendous impact to Wind's bottom line when he came on board. If there are more production snags and management faux pas, or the markets are not reacting positively to Wind's prodcts, Wind might be tempted to throw in the towel. Lot of companies would be interested - INTC, SUNW, TI, CSCO. Interesting question: which one would want Wind the most (and therefore expect to pay the highest price?)
It's obvious that Intel and Sun might should look closely at buying WIND, but why did you put Cisco and TI on the list? I assume you put Cisco on because of TMS and RouterWare, but would Cisco seriously want to buy WIND just to get those things? How would Tornado/VxWorks jive with Cisco's IOS? Also, why is TI on your top-four list? TI concentrates on DSP's and even owns its own OS for DSPs. Why would TI want WIND?
From an investment standpoint, I do believe that WIND's value to anyone of the above minimized the downside risk. With a market cap of just over 1/2 billion, that is a drop in the bucket these days in the M&A games.
Ramsey |
