Rude- Whether it for practical business purposes (ie., not wanting distributors to run out of inventory during heavy sales season) or not, it seems hard to believe that there wasn't some stuffing in 4Q. (and some unstuffing this quarter)....
It would also make sense that distributors got caught with PII inventory when PIII machines have (now) come out, leading to fire-sales, returned merchandise, etc...
Kumar believes they stuffed. Not saying he's God, but he's been as accurate as any analyis lately (for what that's worth)
On what basis do you think Compaq didn't stuff? And, given this were the case, wouldn't they have surely had more visibility on earnings this quarter (ie., they WOULD HAVE KNOWN they were going to sell less into the channel because of a purposeful non-stuff...and would have warned earlier than April 9th)...than if they had stuffed (and had to wait until the end of the quarter to figure out sales return figures, and battled distributors, loaded with inventory, to take even more at the end of the quarter)..etc...
The stuffed scenario just sounded more logical to me...But you are, after all, the DOG, and far be from me to try to outrun you.....Whadda think?
BTW- I believe this is not all a stuff/non-stuff issue because of some of the issues I listed in a previous post: Dell's price aggressivness, confusion/poor execution with direct/indirect, over-optimistic 1st quarter forecasts, etc....But the stuff/non-stuff issue played a part, indeed... |
