Someone at the CC last week asked what should investors use to gauge WIND's progress. The answer was ambigious, just follow design wins or something like that.
Pardon my intrusion on this thread. I have been looking at WIND for a while, thanks to JMD, and mulling whether to initiate a position. I listened to the CC replay on the acquisition and, frankly, was dismayed. Ramsey's note above pretty well captures my reaction. While management for both WIND and INTS were enthusiastic, I though the answers to many of the questions were evasive, vague, ambiguous, and lacking in a framework that would indicate that the two managements had thought this business combination through and that it made all the sense in the world, from all perspectives (dual and complementary primary product offerings vs. VxWorks/Tornado would subsume anything INTS has, to use of sales force, to product development strategies). The reason that WIND's spokesman used to excuse much of the generalities and evasion--that until HSR was cleared, management couldn't respond--absolutely flabbergasted me. HSR doesn't impose a gag rule on prospective merger/acquisition partners or prevent them from determining whether a business combination is in their best interests. How would prospective partners ever know if the deal made sense if HSR prevented you from doing basic business due diligence?
The only concrete move that management would make, in my recollection, was that the 84 sites used by SIND and INTS respectively would be rationalized, and that customers from both companies would continue to be served.
Disclosure: I do not yet appreciate the finer points of WIND's software development issues and business plan, so much of the foregoing may be off the wall. But from an-as-yet-neutral observer, the CC was not impressive. My2c.
Steve |
