Allan,
re: << why does the stock continue to drift South?>>
Lack of news is a killer, although Z looks like it has a impenetrable base.
My understanding (& MHO's) of the situation:
Several (significant) contracts in place, holdup in announcments coming from customer side. Expect news "any day now."
Relative to expected revenues and earnings, Z is undervalued compared to other top 25 y2k stocks. Don't look for Z to tout "expected revenues". Wish they would, but don't think so.
Mike Higgins was featured in an article in today's NewsEDGE from Desktop Data, Inc. Long article explains the y2k delimma, potential impact on society, etc.
Higgins talks of how programmers of the 1960's & 70's had no idea their legacy systems would survive this long, and how these systems now represent such a huge environment, they can't simply be 'thrown away.'
Some quotes from Higgins:
"Most of that software (to modify programs and data) is appropriate for COBOL programming language, which is the majority of legacy systems out there. But you also have a lot of other systems that are not COBOL, for which there are not that many fully automated software tools out there. It will require a lot more manual work to fix those systems."
"I know of companies that spent in excess of a year just to gather their software inventory." The conversion and testing phases eat up more years. With less than three years left, he warns, companies that haven't started the process are in serious danger of not being y2k-compliant in time.
For financial planners who have clients with global investments, Higgins warns that corporations in other parts of the world - Europe and the Far East, for instance - lag behind American companies in meeting the y2k challenge.
A note of interest (to me, anyway) - Also featured in the article was Jim Woodward, senior vice president at Cap Gemini America. I'm sure that all ZMAX investors are familiar with CGA.
IMHO, Z = the Sleeping Giant of y2k. We'll see.
Take care,
David |
