Wow Michael, that was one great post! As long as I have listened to QCOM conference/earnings calls, I have always come away with the same impression: great engineers, lousy spin doctors. Remember this summer when the then cancer story du jour was not Korea but rather production line change over and ramp up? Could they learn to make phones, the right phones, enough phones, cheap enough phones, make them by Christmas, etc?
The analysts just kept hammering away and Jacobs said: we are at this point on (the production line changeover) curve, we intend to be at this point X weeks/months from now, but we may not be. He absolutely refused to depart from a factual description of the state of the state and refused to sugar coat the possibility of a slip-up, despite the fact that the analysts were begging him to tell them: 'everything's gonna be o.k.'
Then the Q laid off several hundred temps (including presumably
chuckj), the downgrades came out, and we got pounded. Thanks for your post. It brought back memories which may be useful for all of us to recall. Mike Doyle |
