Brief synopsis of Goldman Conference -
My contact that was at the conference said the NXTL presentation was extremely well received. As evidence witness the stock aciton yesterday.
Shindler, the CFO, spoke. He highlighted that the next two year's numbers was something they were quite comfortable with. What they really focused on was how excited internally they were at Int'l biz. Low cost of entry with less competition. e.g., In Brazil, people wait for many months or even years to get a crappy unreliable landline phone. If they can give people instant service, what's the growth potential of that? n.b., PW analyst indicated last year that if BLS price for Sao Palo spectrum were applied to NXTL the value of Sao Palo alone would be in excess of $10 per NXTL share. Not counting the rest of Brazil or any other Int'l biz.
The concerns in the audience seemed to be on domestic competitive situation. Namely, Q4 1997 and near term sub # & ARPU.
My guess is the Q1 numbers will addresss concerns about last Q4. Near term sub and ARPU numbers only addressed over time as they deliver the goods.
Final note - This is critical to near term for stock but irrelevant in LT. Analysts are hearding beasts. They almost never diverge from the pack. Long term readers of my posts know why. Any divergence must be explained and subjects you to humiliation and being fired if you're wrong and a "what have you done lately" attitude if you're right.
Therefore - critical to see what position the Street has and which way do they seem to be going. IMHO, the Street is moving up on this stock. The numbers show it and the increasing number of analysts following the stock show it. All it will take is one "opinion leader" to move the numbers up and away we go.
Its irrelevant long term because the numbers will either be there or they won't and the street only lets people know about it ahead of time. IOW, we just get paid a little early if the Street figures it out early. But we still get paid either way.
Seargeant Bubba,
loyal soldier in Arnie's Army. |
