To All, "Compaq's body lies a molderin' in the grave, and the truth goes marching on."
The announcement, after everyone on Wall Street was already drunk as a skunk or heading to their mistresses' apartments, caught me by surprise. Not that Compaq hasn't been in deep kimshee for awhile, but that they were not able to hide their problems this quarter. Did somebody take away all the pencil sharpeners in the accounting dept.
Anyway, it is now obvious that last quarter was phony, as I and several others on this thread thought it was, and the numbers were pumped up because the big bonuses are paid at the end of the year. I still expected CPQ to be able to hide behind the DEC takeover for a quarter or two and for the herd to accept that explanation. This honesty crap, from so unexpected a source, has me really scared. If Compaq is calling for breakeven, what does that mean for everyone else in the business? But I guess they have run out of accounting tricks in the near term and don't want to blame DEC for all their problems, as that might bring shareholder heat on the deal.
And, as usual, Steve did NOT tell us ahead of time. -g- How do we spell channel stuffing, Halfpeace? It turns out the reports from the distributors were right on and Compaq's as phony as a three dollar bill.
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