Dear JCJ: Let me take your comment one step farther:
>Given that the company has now stopped breaking out investment income... --- If I were a
manager holding this stock (Dell), I wouldn't be holding this stock.
I think the ML analyst assigned to DELL should be reassigned. Steve Fortuna covers DELL, CPQ, and Apple. Michael Hillmeyer is his co-author/assistant. For a while I have had the gut feeling that he is like a love sick teen-ager when it comes to DELL. It is one thing for an individual shareholder to be in love with a stock. Although not healthy, an individual shareholder does not hold the power and influence an analyst from a highly respected house does. Analysts who fall in love with stocks are dangerous to others.
Compare this section I posted from Morning Notes to rudedog yesterday:
"Despite this temporary set back, we maintain our positive view in the Dell story and the enormity of the opportunity set still in front of the company..."
With this from the full DELL report:
"Despite this temporary set back, we have not lost
faith in the Dell story or the opportunity we think
lies in front of the company..."
"We have not lost faith in the DELL story?" This sounds more like the battle cry of tunnel vision, SI DELLheads than an analyst, entrusted with making an *objective* evaluation.
Although people tend to say, "Merrill Lynch has a BUY/BUY on DELL, ACCUMULATE/ACCUMULATE on CPQ, and ACCUMULATE/ACCUMULATE on Apple," it is really Steve Fortuna, an analyst I now think is almost incapable of giving a fair shake to **any** company that in any way competes with DELL. In the process, I do not think he's doing DELL or DELL shareholders a favor.
The ML analyst who covers SUNW is Steven Milunovich. He is also the analyst for EMC, NTAP and some other companies (including IBM). He **knows**, has a real handle on storage. The guy is smart. His reports are normally written with John Roy. William Crawford has assisted Steven and John on a few reports lately, which I rightly or wrongly interpret as meaning that John is being groomed to analyze storage.
Storage is *not* Steve Fortuna's thing. Until recently, his name *never* was attached to any ML report that had to do with either the storage industry or individual companies in this industry.
Well, the latest ML research report on CPQ was titled, "Compaq Computer Corp: Rounding Out Storage Offerings." It was written August 1, the day after CPQ announced it new NAS products, by Steve Fortuna and his usual co-author Michael Hillmeyer. They were not even assisted by any of the analysts who work on storage related reports with Steven Milunovich. Frankly, I do not think they were qualified to write that CPQ report--yet they did (and retained their ACCUMULATE/ACCUMULATE ratings).
Steven Fortuna is probably too senior to be fired but I wish his superiors would:
1. Assign DELL to another senior analyst. Steven is too in love with the company. His tunnel vision is not good for ML clients, who make investment decisions based on ML reports.
2. Require him to work with someone who specializes in storage when an assessment of a company's storage initiatives are being made to determine if there should be an opinion change either intermediate or long term.
In closing, you are right and wrong, JCJ:
>Dudes (including Lynn and Jean) - We're golden...
Yes we are! Besides holding shares of this great company, we have Steven Milunovich (instead of Steve Fortuna) covering SUNW for ML!
You are wrong, however, to mention Jean in parenthesis with me, as if Jean is a dudette instead of a dude. Instead of reading the English pronounced, "gene," shift to the French, "jawn." He's French Canadian.
Regards,
Lynn |
