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Technology Stocks : Bolt, Beranek & Newman [BBN]
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To: Manish Dharwadker who wrote ()4/11/1996 7:12:00 PM
From: Scott Maxwell   of 307
 
Some very talented people *do* work for them; I know, I used to be one
of them! <g> But the corporate culture was nurtured in an environment
of cost-plus ARPA contracts (BBN built the first incarnation of the
Internet, for example, under ARPA contracts) -- they have never
demonstrated the desire for profit and growth of a commercially
successful technology company. Management until recently has been
relaxed and second-rate (compared to the engineers and scientists
who work at BBN), muffing numerous opportunities to start new areas
of business (first major packet-switching network; first bit-mapped
terminal; first production multiprocessor; first router; etc. etc.)
much as Xerox PARC, a very similar ogranization, muffed their
innovations when it came time to push *products*.

The contract AT&T gave them last year gave some analysts the idea
that BBN would gain a rapidly growing revenue stream from AT&T. It looks more like AT&T simply needed help to get going and now has
learned enough from BBN to do most of the internet work itself. Thus
the recent decline.

I sold my company shares before the big bust of 1986, when the company
admitted its hyped divisions to commercialize multiprocessors and
scientific software were not going to fly. The current stock price
is still 'way above the intrinsic value of the company unless there
has been a significant change in the culture, which I doubt.
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