Patrice,
You're absolutely right. Even though revenues will be booming, there will still be these acquisition costs for the analysts to sort out. From the huge swings in the valuation of the price of MTLS, it's evident that the analysts are confused.
Even before the situation got so complicated with the recent multiple acquisitions, you could see from the wild range in the stock price (a 10 to 40 range???) that the market was having a great deal of trouble figuring out MetaTools. Here is a company that made its name on some plug-ins! Suddenly they do a very cool high-end special effects application (Bryce), but only appealing to a fairly small group of buyers. Next they're going after a low-end fad sort of product (Goo) and doing a lot of OEM deals for it. Then they buy a high-end 3D company and a rather expensive lab run by a professor (Russian, no less!) with some very potent technology but absolutely no revenue stream--and they do a licensing deal with Lockheed! Then they're talking about some kind of browser that gives you a new way of visualizing the web (the LAST thing I want to do is visualize the web!) Next you see the CEO saying (5/97 Publish), "People should not be surprised to see some of the technology we're working on showing up in data-management, financial-information, and medical-imaging markets." Wow! Quite a smorgasbord.
Personally, I always avoided MetaTools and bought Fractal instead, which seemed to be a much more grounded company. When I tried out Goo at Macworld, I had misgivings after I asked the demo lady to do it with one of my wallet snapshots and instead she wanted to show me the pre-canned demo. (I remember thinking: Hmm, maybe it's not as easy as they say...)
Still, I think they are creating a coherent company out of all this. To do graphics software that excites people, you have to have a gleam in your eye and be creative yourself. It might look a little crazy from the outside but that's as it should be. This is what MetaTools and Fractal have both always been about. (Did you see the results of the Fractal art contest, recently galleried in Step By Step? UNBELIEVABLE!!!) The merger makes them the only serious game in town. I don't see any other company in a position to knock them off. |
