Good series of posts by microcapfun on Yahoo!'s CALP board, starting with this CC summary:
messages.yahoo.com
Which echoes my own. I did listen to it, and don't have much to add.
In general, they expect more visibility by the end of the year. They are altering some aspects of their business model. Namely they're transitioning fixed fee paying Technology Access Program customers to product and services customers, but ahead of plan. This is what the customers wanted, and the financial impact is minor.
SG&A is up due to transition into product selling organization, i.e., they're beefing up sales staff at all levels. Expecting it to grow, but at a slower rate.
The situation reminds me a bit of ABSC's announcement that it wouldn't be profitable as soon as they thought because they initiated their "Big Biology" internal develoment program. ABSC got clobbered, but bounced back for a double before Vertex munched it. I could see CALP following this script, minus the munch. The market fundamentals are good, they've been selling instruments (via Agilent 2100 sales) at a time when other equipment suppliers weren't.
Also, analyst Mac of Gruntal cut targets from short term $58 and long term $65 to $30 and $35, respectively, while maintaining his outperform rating.
Cheers, Tuck |
