Greetings Chris!
Let me preface this LGS.A discussion with some financial numbers given in thousands of Canadian dollars:
1. Quarterly revenues from 1st qtr 1996 through 1st qtr 1997:
$19,690....$20255....$21856....$21638....$19956
2. Quarterly earnings same period:
$382.......$718......$478......$478......$190
I couldn't find any reason why the quarterly revenues and earnings dropped so drastically between 4th quarter 96 and 1st quarter 97. Also interesting as you can see, is that although revenues were up 1st quarter 97 over 1st quarter 96, earnings dropped by about 50%.
Unfortunately, I could not find a detailed financial report which would explain how LGS earns and spends money. One interesting possibility is that other tech companies like ORCL and CA have reported weak European sales. If LGS receives a large portion of its revenues from its European subsidiary, that may explain the drop in revenues and earnings.
A second interesting possibility is that the corporation may be spending on technology needs to implement its Year 2000 efforts.
On to Japan. The education system and corporate environment are completely different in Japan than the U.S. I'm of course a big U.S. fan. In Japan, the elementary and high schools are incredibly difficult to get through/pass. The goal of high schoolers is to pass the difficult entrance exams to get into the best Universities. This contrasts with the U.S. where elementary and high school are pretty much cakewalks.
Ah! but at this point things change. Once a Japanese student gets accepted into a University, it is quite easy to pass. University admission is a virtual gurantee of graduation. Now can you imagine getting admitted to someplace like Harvard or Stanford and expecting that with very little effort, in 4 years you will graduate? Hah! You'd be washed out the first Semester! Even at any U.S. State University you have to work for your degree.
After those easy college years comes the Japanese business world. Graduation from a good University guarantees a spot in a good corporation. Once you are hired at any level into a corporation you are guaranteed a job for life. (Recently however, they've had to start letting people go, because finances have been so bad.) So once hired, I don't think there is a great deal of aggressive initiative, innovation, and continuous efforts to be innovative and increase corporate profits. In contrast in the U.S., a degree may be somewhat a guarantee of a job, but after a person has been on the job for say 6 months, if all he or she is doing is sitting around collecting a pay check, he or she won't be working there long.
In Japan, you do not see all the small aggressive companies trying to make names for themselves like in the U.S. You do not see people leaving their corporations because they have dreams and wanting to start their own companies to reach those dreams.
Here's a last interesting thing on Japan. Thier written language. Everyword has its own characters. Your average Japanese student cannot read the whole newspaper until he or she is in the upper levels of high school. Think about a keyboard for a computer...if your written language requires thousands of separate characters! Needless to say, it is my impression that the Japanese are falling behind in the information age. There was a stage many years ago where U.S. businesses and governments started instituting local area networks to tie their computers together. This of course was followed by wide area networks where corporate offices in diverse locations were tied together. As far as I can see, Japan has not entered the first stage of putting together local area networks.
South Korea is a different story. I believe they revamped thier written language so that it has an alphabet, although a strange looking one. Lots of circles. I think it is a society with a lot of initiative and innovativeness, having been there quite a few times. Nothing has ever been handed to the South Koreans, and they have North Korea continually threatening them, to keep them on thier toes.
I suggest you also take a look at Vietnam for country funds.
Take care, Denise
|
