OT- John, I respect your views about stocks in general. However, I would be very careful with ORCL. While I think it is an excellent company, the truth is the the SQL database market is getting commoditized. I have a number of friends who work for ORCL, and they have told me that MSFT is winning a number of contracts based on SQL Server over comparable ORCL products. Many companies feel that the price savings are worth a lower performing product. The analogy that I would make is that many consumers can afford a lexus, but chose to buy toyotas. They are happy with Toyotas and would rather spend their money on other products. To keek the analogy going, hopefully companies will spend more of their IT budgets on the Y2K.
While ORCL may be able to keep customers, the question is at what cost. How much will margins be squeezed. Clearly in hindsight, with the problems that IMFX, SYBS, REDB were facing, the database market is changing. I think ORCL is a great company, but its PE is fairly high, and the question is, can they continue to grow to support this PE.
Best wishes,
Dan |
