<<My take on all of this is that ASND is working to hard to manage the books and it's boomeranging on them. They should realize a quarters revenue related shipments in the quarter they are shipped, regardless of how the product is financed. It's all this bookmaking shenanigans that has MM's spooked. Remember, (especially in this market), analysts and MM's don't like uncertainty. Any confusion at all and they'll go somewhere else where they are more comfortable.>>
Gary, I'll take the other side of your "devil's advocate" argument.
Mory can't win. He is in a business where revenue streams are hard to control and can be lumpy. If he has a great quarter and recognizes all revenue when it is shipped, the idiot analysts rush to issue scores of upgrades and be the first to RAISE estimates .10 or .15 for the next quarter and the next, then when ASND misses by .08 or .04 (but still does 400 million a quarter with 65% gross margin), they get slammed by analysts, downgraded, sued, and raked over the coals for not "managing the street".
I think Mory has decided he is working for him and his board, not the analysts. He will manage revenue and earnings so the analysts can't raise their estimates too much, then he will do what he has to do to beat them by one or two cents. If that means flipping 8 million on a 370 million quarter, more power to him. And if he did it last quarter too, great. If investors don't like it, go find another business with 65%+ gross margins and pretty solid prospects to increase business to 10 times current levels two years from now. I'll stay put.
If Mory was going through these machinations to barely eke out earnings every quarter, I would feel differently, but its the opposite. He has a quickly growing, though lumpy and unpredictable, revenue stream and is trying to keep the analysts from telling HIM he should earn $0.51 next quarter, and if he doesn't, "he's a poor manager."
They can write off loans every quarter and analysts can "tut tut" all they want, but we don't have 1/50th of the network infrastructure we need in this country, for the next two years, much less longer. The only thing that can stop this company from exploding is if dark fiber and pure IP somehow become prevalent quicker than 4 - 5 years out, obviating the need for ATM switching in the core, and catching Mory without a product for that paradigm. Hopefully he will not let that happen either.
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