Rubber Man,
You are assuming that there is something, anything of value in Zitel, if only management would cut loose its "dogs." The problem is that Zitel's a veritable kennel.
Cut R&D? It can't because Zitel's best chance of any future earnings is in products it hasn't developed yet. If Zitel had a reliable source of income from at least one product, it could cut back on investing in new ones. But it doesn't, so it can't.
Sure, Zitel could do a few more Cayman deals, cut back on SGA, or sell its stake in Matridigm. But look at how Zitel management has invested its money recently: buying three obscure, money-losing tech companies that lost even more money once Zitel acquired them. Before that, Zitel invested in an obscure start-up company whose silver bullet was supposed to be an automatic fix for the y2k problem. And yet here we are two years before the millenium, and MD still hasn't returned to Zitel a dime of profits or at least "none that would show up." IBM is zeroing out Zitel's only (former) profit center, and there is nothing on the horizon to take its place.
Zitel is dead, fini, kaput. The corpse may still be moving for a few more months, but the show's over.
John |
