The Yahoo Club Thread had some interesting stuff this evening. She-X has some ideas about AV.
This post by Brian Cranston was a re-run of El's encounter with CPQ's IR. But this version has a lot more legalistic wriggle room in it to allow CPQ to warn. And note that IR says it was EM who made the comment to analysts.
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Brian Cranston
I called IR, and asked the following questions:
Q: "In the past week or so I have seen that many analysts have lowered earnings estimates for the first quarter, saying that CPQ warned of weaker sales, but have not seen anywhere what exactly CPQ said. Did CPQ issue some sort of warning?"
A: 'what basically happened is that 2 weeks ago we had a meeting at our headquarters with CSFB (credit swiss first boston), like we routinely do with different firms, and at that time Earl Mason (our CFO) answered a question from an analyst about demand in the first quarter, and answered that they had seen some weakness in the industry as a whole, including CPQ, during the first 6 weeks, but that it was too early to lower guidance for the quarter. That was taken by many to be a sort of warning or pre-announcement, and immediately many analysts lowered estimates. We have taken a big hit in share price, but the tech stocks in general have been very volatile of late.'
Q: 'I did hear that Earl Mason had said that January and the first 2 weeks of February were weaker than expected and the quarter depended on how the end of Feb and March turned out. Do they have an idea of how the last two weeks of February and the first week of March have turned out?'
A: 'They have seen an increase in the end of February, and the focus is really now on how March is going to go. There is alot of speculation about what our quarter is finally going to look like.'
Q: 'is IR regularly updated on how monthly sales are going? Could I for example call back at the end of March to find out how sales have gone?'
A: 'we are rather restricted in what we can say. we can comment in general on upswings and downswings, but you can certainly call back again.'
Q: 'What is the current analyst consensus?'
A: I believe we are at 34c right now.
I left one important thing out, in the answer where she mentioned that tech stocks have been volatile in general, and that CPQ had taken a big hit in recent weeks, she said she believed it to be an over-reaction.
just my opinion, but my overall impression was not very confidence inspiring (for this quarter at least). It seemed the answers I received were carefully chosen to allow for an 'official' warning, if necessary.
of interest, E.M. only said that 'it is too early to lower guidance for the quarter'. that leaves the door open to lower guidance later in the quarter.
and her comment that 'there is alot of speculation about what our quarter is finally going to look like' was certainly interesting, but i did not know what to make of it, or how to follow up on that point.
Brian Cranston
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