By Eric J. Savitz
Novell lives. For some people, that may be hard to believe. After all, Novell has been through a hellish stretch of product delays, inventory woes, disastrous acquisitions, deep job cuts and a nearly complete overhaul of top management. Many on Wall Street now view the company as just one more victim of the Redmond juggernaut, expecting to see Novell's flagship NetWare network operating system software steamrolled by Microsoft's Windows NT. Certainly, you'd be hard pressed to find a company with an uglier stock chart -- Novell shares have been losing value almost continuously for five straight years, having retreated steadily from $35 in 1993 to under $7 earlier this year. Novell's chart has the look of a stock headed for oblivion.
Or maybe not. For at long last, Novell shows signs of life. The first step in the turnaround really came 11 months ago, when it named former Sun Microsystems technology chief Eric Schmidt to succeed Ray Noorda as CEO. After a year of serious repairs, Novell now appears to be inching forward again, and the Street has slowly begun to take notice. Late last month, Novell reported better-than-expected results for its fiscal first quarter, ended January 31, earning four cents a share. It was Novell's first profit from operations since mid-1997. Bolstered by the encouraging news, investors have bid the stock back up to around $10. There could be considerably more where that came from.
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