Doug:
Been away for a few days, boy has the mood around here changed.
To answer your Q though, PALM had FY 1999 revenues of $564 million and net after tax earnings of about $30 million ($0.05/share based on 573.45 million shares outstanding)
For the first 6 months of FY 2000 (FY ends 5/31/00), revenues were $435 million and net earnings $22.5 million. Palm VII was introduced in October, near the end of Q2, and revenues from this will be reflected in Q3 which just ended and will be reported the week of 3/20 (along with COMS probably). My take is that revenues for FY 2000 will be around $1 billion and earnings around $50 million ($0.09/share), though I've seen revenue estimates of $1.5 billion. Earnings will take a hit for the next few Q's because PALM only had 652 employees, and I would expect SG&A to ratchet up to support the new organization.
So at around $66/share, we're looking at a market cap of about $38 billion, a P/S of around 38, and a P/E of about 750 if my (conservative) $1 billion revenues/$50 million earnings numbers are right. Compare this to a well established flyer like CSCO with a P/S of around 15 and P/E around 130, or a newbie flyer like JNPR with a P/S of over 400 and P/E of over 2000.
Keep in mind that Q3 is the seasonally weak Q both for COMS and PALM (though PALM VII could alter that trend for this Q3), so there may be no help from the earnings in a couple of weeks. As Gary and others will tell you, COMS always surprises, and it always seems to be to the downside.
David T. |
