El, I realize you are a CPQ bull, but give me a break. CPQ hasn't done anything in the past year. Several analysts have been upgrading CPQ for the few months and the stock has done nothing. Management has mismanaged its inventory and commenced a price war to address this issue. On the other hand, Dell has executed flawlessly, managing to make more than CPQ, IBM, HWP and GTW combined in the past two quarters during the price war that CPQ started. Additionally, the top executives (or at least Earl "the Pearl" Mason) owns almost no shares in his own company while Michael Dell has about 200 million shares. Yes, I know Earl baby has options, but why won't he own the stock when he exercises them??????
IMHO, CPQ management will be engrossed in trying to make the DEC merger work for the next year. Their will be layoffs, people stepping over people and poor morale. These are tough issues to overcome. During this time Dell will thrive on CPQ's weakness and continue to take advantage of its forward momentum. Dell is building new factories, CPQ is laying people off. Which picture looks better?
One last point, telling us that your broker thinks CPQ doesn't mean anything to me. Most brokers are high priced salesmen with little financial analytical skills. When I first bought Dell in November 1995, a Merrill broker told me he didn't like Dell, he liked CPQ. Now that Dell has grown almost 3000% since I bought it and CPQ has grown by how much -300%? Tell me who was right. I have learned the best advice to depend on is your own.
Best of luck to you.
:o)
Drew |
