Kenneth Miller - I would offer the winter 1996 - early spring 1997 networking fiasco as support for your argument. During that time period, there were many questions raised about slowing demand in the networking industry. So, COMS went from 80 to a low of 24, Cisco from 75 to 45, Bay down to 16 (it was in rebuild mode anyway), etc. etc. All of a sudden about a week before Cisco was to report earnings, ML said they thought Cisco would not miss. Well, Cisco went from 45 to 90 (down a bit recently), COMS went from 24 to over 60, Bay to 41, and so forth. Recently they have pulled back (except for Cisco), but the point is that if PC demand is really OK and CPQ delivers decent numbers, the same thing is likely to occur. I still chuckle as I recall 'Cramer' saying (this past spring) he thought institutions would be 'puking' up Cisco all year long. Instead, the exact opposite occurred.
John |
