comments from the bancboston robbie stephens tech '99 conference via yesterday's thestreet.com.
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2/23/99 3:13 PM ET
What Landis Likes
SAN FRANCISCO - Fresh from the Legato Systems (LGTO:Nasdaq) presentation Monday morning at the BancBoston conference, Firsthand funds manager Kevin Landis called the network storage software maker's story "impressive" but said he hasn't pulled the trigger on a buy yet. "The stock's pricey," he said.
Legato is in a kind of "Coke-and-Pepsi" war with competing storage software maker Veritas Software (VRTS:Nasdaq), said Landis. He's keeping a watchful eye on Legato, which he said just "might be the Coke."
While Landis has long preferred to play the Internet from the ground up, investing in "infrastructure" companies such as Cisco (CSCO:Nasdaq) and Texas Instruments (TXN:NYSE), he did buy America Online (AOL:NYSE) last summer for his $50 million Technology Leaders fund "immediately after, it announced the Netscape (NSCP:Nasdaq) deal," he said.
The manager said the Internet service firm has demonstrated its ability to keep customers loyal, unlike online retailer Amazon.com (AMZN:Nasdaq), which Landis said has so far failed to convince him it possesses an "enduring competitive advantage."
Landis' $150 million Technology Value fund is up 24.5% over the past 12 months; Technology Leaders is up 74.9% in the same time period, according to Lipper.
Landis has been doing the rounds at the Tech '99 conference armed with a five-pack of color highlighters to organize his schedule of preferred company presentations: green for "know-it-and-love-it" companies; pink for companies whose "tires deserve kicking"; yellow for "nothing-better-to-do" companies; purple and blue for private meetings.
Among the greens were old favorites such PMC-Sierra (PMCS:Nasdaq), Level One (LEVL:Nasdaq) and Vitesse (VTSS:Nasdaq). |
