Clark, I was all prepared to nail Doug and Ed's "Well, if they didn't know, they should have known and therefore may not be liars but are certainly managerial incompetents" thesis when you did it for me. Well done.
I was disappointed that Doug and Ed refused to buy off on my "speed of the developing crisis" rationale to which you have neatly appended the "inscrutability of the Orient" plank. I have previously warned you against graceful writing enveloped with quiet logic and reason. Consider this your second offense.
For all the money grubbers around this joint, I suppose the real issue now is how bad is bad. I told you guys last night that the analysts were big time honked off and the B.T. Alex Brown tassled loafer appears to be the ring leader. The Lehman dude is still in camp and my guess is that the ML whiz kid with the English accent is still on board. The rest of them have gone south for the winter, and as Ed rightly observes, won't be back for a spell. That, coupled with the minor matter of Korea and the rest of SEA, ,implies to me that we ain't looking at a whole lot of upside.
(I don't want to let the cat out of the bag--get it--but I am in secret communique' with the 4 legged one who will report on what the hell all that delay with the new phone and the FCC means. Frankly, that would p*ss me off about management cause these guys are supposed to know that end of the biz cold, no excuses. But maybe *he* will write and tell us all that FCC delays on phones goes with the territory. BTW, he's doing fine and is being well taken care of.)
So the question really becomes has the elevator hit the ground floor? I don't buy the CYMI and IOM analogies--both those issues got hyped to the max and were selling at valuations that made zero sense to anybody. Hell, even the Alex Brown Q* hater just whacked fiscal '99 from 2.40 to 2.30, big deal, though he took a much bigger bite out of '98. So we're selling at maybe 30X '98 and 20X '99 as of today's lovely close of action. My crystal ball isn't as good as Ramsey's but I'll hazard a stab and say we'll stay in the 40's for a while.
I am very troubled about the Q phone--it's state of the art, it's the Porsche, and evidently the markets ain't buying it. That, to me, is a REAL PROBLEM. I think folks think phones are well, you know, like, phones. Just like I don't buy expensive pens and sunglasses cause I lose a couple of each a year, I'm worried that people are looking at phones the same way--they'll lose'em, or they'll get stolen, or they'll drop them, or they'll be a better one in a few months to switch to, and the competition in the PCS market is such that they'll probably be right! So $500 for a Q phone, when $200 will get the job done--maybe not today thanks. Marketing gurus chime in.
Last (aren't you relieved?), I want the Q to go directly to Europe, do not pass go and do not come back without the order. I want the Q to go to Mexico. I want the Q to nail Columbia or wherever that $550MM order is floating around. Asia is one sick puppy. We've got the flag firmly planted there and of course it will come back but if the Q is to see any real upside, we've got to massively reduce our dependence on that neck of the woods. It's been a lovely ride, thanks for helping us get CDMA established, see 'ya, gotta run. Sorry for the length of this post. Mike Doyle |
