Efii. I would not be in too much of a hurry to buy. Almost all holders for more than Friday have got to be loosers. All mo mo money is going out. A lot already has, but probably not all. Plus there will be tax selling on any bounce. I bet it goes a bit lower for those reasons, though it will probabaly also bounce for a while.
I don't have deep knowledge of Efii. I do recommend the conf. call. That convinced me there is no dishonesty or lack of candor problem.
Basically, I think their earnings will be lousy for Q1 98, flat with Q4, then up a little in Q3, lots and lots next several quarters after that.
As you will learn from conf. call their problems were 3. In order of importance: 1) Severe change in Japanese copier co. inventory policies, from 2 months to close to zero, brought on in part by uncertainty, pessimism in Japan; also efficiency mandates [this is temporary, phase shift problem]; 2) product transition, mostly by Efii, party by customers, which includes missed software deadlines by Efii caused customers to hold off on orders; 3) overall sell through weakness in Asia, or fear/expectation of it by copier OEM customers (e.g. Cannon, Ricoh, et. al.)
They appear to be maintaining a virtual lock on their business (which is providing software/chip hardware to enable color (and now black and white) copiers to do up to very high quality color printing from PC's on corporate computer networks.
They have a major push to expand their business into the lower end which seems to involve some B&W and lower end color printers, and greatly enhancing their capabilities.
Their customers include Zerox and all the Japanese copier cos. It seems that the major competitor they worry about is HP, which really doesn't have competitive high end quality competitive systems, but int o whose terrritory they with their copier engine partners are trying to expand.
The worry is always of course that some of these OEM entities decide to do the software inhouse, as cerainy HP does, at least as far as basic capabilities are concerned.
I do know that their Fiery brand software color servers are regarded as the basic standard for pretty high end color. They do not I think make the very highest end color seperation stuff which the high end magazines, (National Geographic, Arch Digest, etc.) for example, use.
Doug |
