Andreas - you must feel like I felt yesterday - but I think you're being a LITTLE harsh, maybe??
I think that the webcast from the wireless conference was more than just a good performance - it put substance on a lot of the somewhat airy messages (like the one from CE magazine) and Capellas seemed ready to go to the next level and the one after that if the interviewer could stay with it. Don't ask Michael DELL to do that - at least not these days. Dell flubbed most of the questions at his Win2K launch press event and then fell back to empty boasts and CPQ bashing... not too impressive. This kind of exposure reinforces the notion (which I am taking to more and more) that Capellas has technical savvy as well as business skills, and really might be the right guy for the job. If the street shifts to that viewpoint, we will be off to the races independent of any real events like say earnings or cost cutting...
on paragraph 5, perhaps Nilesh Parikh was referring to the recent notice of sale of "ask jeeves" stock, or perhaps something else in the public domain recently - there certainly has been a bunch of activity which has not seemed to move the stock price. I'm sure that CPQ management will do everything in its power to meet or beat expectations... but that in itself is, as you say, part of the job.
Saying that the stock price was 25 when Capellas took over is a little disingenuous - you surely know it was lower than that just before he was appointed, and he was handed the keys just in time to reap the rewards of the first losing quarter since 1991. The subsequent drop was painful but provided me with some fine opportunities... I didn't mind the drop to 18 at all, seeing as how it paid out in 7 figures for a very modest risk... now I just need to see a steady rise into the 40s over the next few months to be quite happy with CPQ all in all... I would rather see a solid turn-around plan than Earl Mason style - push the problem off for a while...
Having said that I'm plenty sick and tired of the current mid-20's neighborhood and would like to see a change of scenery, say uptown to the mid-30s. |
