For anyone who missed it, CEO Bill Miller was just on CNBC. He explained the revenue weakness in the past 2Q as a result of a tough comparison to last year's 2Q, when they were meeting a pent-up demand for upgrades. Going forward, he says they've given WS guidance that 3Q revenues will be up somewhat, with stronger growth in 4Q, and much stronger growth into '99. Driving revenue growth will be:
1) Softimage, [zoft-eem-ahge'].
2) The broadcast market as Avid solutions will be on the market in '99 that can process uncompressed video, which has been an obstacle in that arena.
3) HDTV.
He did not mention the remarkable job he's done managing the existing business, especially improving margins. Avid now has six successive quarters of beating earnings expectations, and despite some claims that AVID "recently boasted a PE of 46" it currently carries a trailing PE of about 21 and a est '98 PE of less than 20. The PE on '99 estimates of $2 is about 16.
David, I am curious about your long-running campaign against investing in Avid, both here and on Compuserve and on Yahoo. I appreciate your expertise as someone who actually uses these systems, but don't understand why anyone neither long nor short the stock would take so much time to post analyses of the company. Last year you were digging around in the 10-k for some info about conditional sales of trial systems that you thought would come back to haunt the company. Now you are ignoring the forward-looking statements from them about sources for future growth, and gloating about warnings you gave that the stock was overvalued. Why do you care, if you don't own or short the stock? If you are simply concerned with stock market excesses, take a look at Pixar, which has a market cap about 3 1/2 times Avid's and boasted revenues (not earnings) of $4 million last quarter compared to Avid's $100m. Just curious. By the way, I do share your concerns about revenues, though the profit picture seems a strong statement for good management.
Bruce
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