Jorj,
Thank you for the kind words. Someone asked my opinion and I gave it. In my job (I'm a portfolio manager BTW), it is a very bad thing to get too emotional about stocks - impossible to do if you're an employee of a company, so I have no problem with either you or OG. It is certainly possible that I am wrong about the pace of change in networks. I try to do as work as possible to figure out not just what technologies are best, but also how non-technology factors may effect actual deployment.
You know, I quite admire Cisco, the company. I am overweight the stock right now relative to the sector (and heavily overweight the ASND/LU combo). I have to say the relative valuation and the EPS growth rate have me worried - any sign of weakness and this has alot further to fall than LU IMHO. In the long run, as I have maintained repeatedly, CSCO will prove to be a good investment - and I don't think that the whole single network architecture vision has to come true for Cisco to come out a winner.
Nonetheless, I don't think it is as much of a risk free slam dunk as most on this thread seem to think. I appreciate an issues based exchange - while I think OG adheres way to much to party line, I respect his point of view. I would say that this thread could be alot better. Pretty much the only opposing viewpoints are ill-informed or over emotional, provoking knee-jerk reactions.
I challenge cisco supporters to really think about what aspects of Cisco's world-view could be challenges and to articulate them here. While I'm sure in its paranoia, Cisco management has alot of internal discussions about where it may be weak that it would never admit to in a public forum, I think it would help Cisco investors to think about under what circumstances Cisco might be a less than stellar investment over the 6 month to 1 year timeframe. You and I may come to different conclusions, but at least we might have a useful dialog. Alot better than "Cisco is unstoppable. I'm up 500 percent over X yrs which means the stock is certain to go up in the same way going forward. All communications in the world will be IP based by 2005 and Cisco will have all of the market to itself. blah blah" followed by "Cisco will be dead in 3 years because routers will go away. It will never be successful in carriers. Chambers is a bad guy. blah blah" |
