>>I don't have much impact on taking down Compaq. If so, it would have fallen much
sooner and much further than it did, as the problems were obvious to anyone paying
attention. The set of those paying attention, of course, did not include the subset of
most of the investing public. -g- I am going to wait awhile to dump hard on this
bowwow again. They are flim-flamming their eps reports pretty good and they have
folks thinking that absolute disaster was "better than expected." ("Yes, The Titanic is
sinking, but, damn it, some great booze is being given away free at the bar." -g-_
So, my guess is the Great Unwashed may carry it a bit higher or at least support its
current grotesque overvaluation before it falls to its inevitable fair value somewhere
in the pre-teen level.<<
Mike, I have heard you call Compaq a dog (I think "Alpo-eating" was the exact term) several times lately. Could you be more specific about what disaster you think is approaching? "Flim-flamming eps" is a little vague.
Yes, I know they stuffed the channel, but they claim to have inventories under control now. They are currently digesting DEC, which gives them a very big rug to sweep one-time costs under (there must be a few genuine transitional expenses involved!). They have acquired DEC's service arm (and AltaVista for a little glitz), and are now competing not just with other boxmakers, but with HWP and IBM as enterprise-wide support.
So why do you hate them? Do you think all the boxmakers will go broke?
Do you think they will get nothing useful from DEC? Please explain. |
