>>Here's my top 10 list, with a slightly different take:
REASONS WHY TO AVOID IOM<<
Rocky - Let's take these point by point:
>>1) Terrible relationship with Wall Street with no signs of improvement<<
A bad place to start a rebuttal, since I can't really argue with it.
>>2) Overall growth is slowing markedly<<
You didn't quantify it, and "markedly" is subjective. I'm not that unhappy with 77% growth from '96 to '97. Certainly I wouldn't expect that much growth every single year, but the current P/E leaves a lot of upside room. I think a lot of stockholders would be happy with, say, 20 to 30% growth annually.
>>3) Jaz growth will turn to Jaz decline this year<<
You probably still believe that Jaz sales only grew 7% for the year, which is wrong. Still, since this is a prediction based on conjecture, you could be either right or wrong.
>>4) Sony<<
Not there yet. Haven't seen a real working prototype even.
>>5) Failure of Zip as floppy replacement<<
As you yourself said, the floppy is being replaced by several things. For the "general small-scale backup and file transfer device" functions of floppies, Zip is the clear leader as the standard replacement.
>>6) Vapor! - still no OEM's. They have had years to get some<<
How you do go on about this. Initial announcement of n.hand tech was when, Rocky? Not even two years ago. It was November of '96.
>>7) Syquest 4.7 Gigabyte Quest --bye bye Jaz2<<
Quest is still not in stores. And here's another interesting point: under the operating systems currently in use on the vast majority of personal computers, you can't use a 4.7GB disk without dividing it into THREE partitions and accessing it as THREE logical drives (i.e. F, G, and H drives). A 2GB disk can be used as one partition.
If and when Quest ships, it will sell to some high-end niche markets. I'm willing to bet that Jaz2 will sell also, and will generate a profit for Iomega. I'm willing to bet that it will generate more profit than Quest does for SyQuest.
>>8) low price of stock limits Institutional Interest<<
Yes, that's what some people say. And you have said that the institutions are all investing heavily in SyQuest, which has been below three for most of the past several years.
>>9) It's all in the discs, and...
10) Disc Tie ratios are down.<<
But disc unit sales are still up.
- Allen |
