Given that the company guidance had firmly projected 68 cents of EPS for all of FY02, the fact that analyst expectations now fall as low as 29 cents would seem to be a good indication that either the warning is real, or there has been an awfully large misinterpretation.
Don, my point isn’t that the warning wasn’t real. My point is that the reason why and when they warned is far more real.
I am not trying to suggest the company did wrong by warning earlier than at the upcoming earnings CC, but to get investors to realize that the probable reason they warned when they did very likely is good for the stock. To make this very clear, had I been in their shoes, I would have done exactly what they did, and for the reasons I gave – of course subject to strict SEC regulations governing material events, etc. etc.
I rarely post guesses about short-term stock movement, mainly because I rarely have any idea whatsoever what will happen over the near-term. I guess the issue I raised about the warning is my oblique way of suggesting that the near-term movement in the stock should be up, and possibly significantly so.
You mentioned the W.R. Hambrecht analysis following the warning. Since new disclosure regulations allow us to assume the assigned analyst received no more information than any of the rest of us, frankly I find it a bit of a stretch. He should have gone to a neutral rating and punted on estimates. His 29 cents this year and 85 cents for next year run the risk of being taken literally by investors, when they are in fact meaningless. All analyst models are out to lunch at the moment, waiting for additional guidance from management before anything approximating reality can be estimated.
On a pro forma basis, the staff reductions will offset some of the expected shortfall in revenues. If the economy kick-starts next year, WIND’s lean and mean cost structure will set the stage for a jump in earnings, similar to when Ron Abelmann became CEO and immediately announced a 10% staff reduction. However, putting reasonable numbers on outcomes is impossible without having something concrete to hang your hat on. The most concrete thing I can think of would be careful estimates of one or two significant lily ponds that seem able to continue growing rapidly over the next two or three years. That’s why I am focused on a lily pond I believe could carry the company single-handed near-term: Server Appliances.
Allen |
