More from the AOL Motley Fool board. This may add some perspective over time to S. Bateh's numbers. The raw data and a chart is included in the link provided.
Subject: IOM inventory numbers link
Date: 4/10/99 4:49 PM Central Daylight Time
From: Janovsky1
Folks,
Over the past few months, I've been trying to keep track of Iomega's inventory at Sparco, which as you may know is affiliated with Ingram. Since inventory management is a big part of the virtual enterprise management, I figured tracking inventory numbers over time might give a good indication of how well this model is being implemented. Now that Q1 numbers are nearly upon us, perhaps it is a good time to share these numbers with everyone else to help with estimates for this Thursday. While I'm not sure how these translate exactly into revenue numbers, they do give me confidence that the model is being implemented, channel inventories are being cut, and that cash flow for the quarter should be good before other charges.
members.aol.com
Some trends that I've noticed:
- Zip 100 drive inventories WAY down from end of Q4 to end of Q1, especially PP's, down about 90%. Zip 100 disk inventories down by a lesser margin.
- Zip 250 started arriving in real volume about 2 days before end of Q1. Both PP and SCSI 250's now equal or exceed 100's.
- Jaz pricing and inventory has remained very stable.
- Clik sell through has been much less than impressive. Only started arriving in quantity a few days ago.
- Zip Plus is gone, SCSI Zip 100 is close to gone.
- IOM is still producing Bernoulli cartridges! For what reason, I have no idea.
Editorial comment: Because they probably have to in order to keep Bernoulli drive users supplied with disks
A few weeks data is missing due to illness, computer problems, and vacation, but I think this chart can give a decent idea as to how the channel inventory is being dealt with.
Hope this is valuable to some of you.
Rob
Editorial comment: Rob has obviously put a lot of work into his spreadsheet and chart which is viewable via his provided link. The chart says it all!
This just may be good evidence of my previous assertions that Scott Flaig's virtual enterprise model will eventually wring out the internal operating cost/inventory excesses that contributed to Iomega's losses in 1998.
Dave
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