>any comments on MWAR's recent moves, not necessarily in terms
>of stock price but rather the IBM deal?
This announcement, as well as WIND's recent announcement about the Mars Pathfinder, are examples of market inefficiencies. Both of these deals have been known publicly for a long time, but the market blips up when reminded of them. Just as the Pathfinder reminder emphasizes WIND's credibility with mission critical clients and has long-term, market positioning value, the IBM announcement reinforces MWAR's claim that they will be a legitimate player in the NC space.
That the market reacts positively to these reminders suggests that it really does forget, or simply doesn't believe, what was indicated earlier. The Mars Pathfinder use of VxWorks has been known for years. IBM was mentioned as a special client in MWAR's IPO prospectus, and the fact that OS-9 was selected as IBM's NC reference platform was announced sometime last fall, as I recall.
Maybe the market has learned from past mistakes. Maybe it has learned to discount initial announcements, and reward stocks only when the deal starts to bear fruit. In any case, the challenge for MWAR is to convert the IBM deal to revenues quickly to keep the market from "forgetting" again. Of course the Mars Pathfinder doesn't convert immediately to noticeable revenues, so the WIND announcement only resulted in a blip.
I thnk NCI is the main driver in the NC space, not IBM. However, IBM is probably number two, and may become an attractive vehicle for MWAR.
Incidentally, we all await Ellson's NC announcement on the 24th of June, and probably a series of interesting NC-related announcements over the remainder of the year.
Allen |
