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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Globalstar Telecommunications Limited GSAT -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ok2Launch who wrote (5513)	7/2/1999 3:51:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

OK2, making money in the stockmarket is a matter of predicting the future before others have any idea what's going on. The present stock price of Globalstar is therefore irrelevant. I need to know what the stock price will do and how much profit there will be over the next 5 and 10 years. I therefore need to judge the current position and declared plans of the company. It is not too early to conclude that they are repeating the mistakes of Iridium. They have started selling, and rightly so, even though they have nothing to sell. Valueman has been told prices and schedules. That is selling. Direct selling. It is establishing in the minds of prospective customers what Globalstar is all about. So far, it is a big ugly phone, which gets flat batteries, you can't use it all over the world contrary to the impression given by the word "Globalstar" and advertisements and media discussions and Iridium's advertising. It costs heaps [$1500] and the minutes are off the planet at $2. Use it outside only [in a car is okay if you have a car kit installed] and not under trees - you need a BIG sky. The impression the customers get now will last until something knocks them onto a different track and they will be resistant to going onto a new track. That is inherent human nature. Stay on track! That's why so many companies go bust and determinedly stay with crazy ideas - they are determined to stay on track, even when things become absurdly obvious. Look at Ericy and CDMA as just one example. Look at Iridium as another. Of course, it is also true that successful people are determined to stay on track. Those who wobble all over the place don't do well either. An uptrend in the Globalstar stock price does not get customers. It is just a vote by shareholders as to how well things are going to go. People vote for all sorts of stupid things. We are unhappy because we think that customers are not going to come running. They are going to yawn. [Generally - of course some will run. At least 31,415 will come running, slowly. We need 100 times that many to start to smile. While Iridium is no long term competitive threat, since it has so few minutes to sell and is in 'rescue a bit of flotsam' mode, there is, as already pointed out, a chance to get even those few customers Iridium might otherwise get, denying Iridium sufficient cash flow to keep operating. I disagree with the cheap handsets idea. The handsets need to go to the people who will use a lot of minutes. They will be happy to pay the higher prices for the handsets. Handsets and minutes can't both be cheap because there will be a limited supply of handsets, until Q! Ericy and Telital see that there is going to be serious demand and they build production lines. What we can sell cheap is minutes, which we have in huge overabundance with a zero marginal cost of production for the next minute sold. Stack em high and sell em cheap is how to move the minutes. Use the WalMart discount method - they sell a lot of stuff, which has a marginal cost. It is nice to see a rising stock price, but Iridium rose all the way to $72. That must have been nice at the time. Reality is what matters. Maurice

To: Ok2Launch who wrote (5513)	7/2/1999 9:45:00 PM
From: John Stichnoth	Respond to of 29987

Addressing your second point first: Secondly, and more importantly, G stock is now in a very solid uptrend, for the first time in ages.* For the risk of this investment, I expect more than a "solid uptrend" in return. The Risks section in the 10K is the longest I have ever read--and with good reason. New Industry. New Product. Development Stage Company. Etc. . . I believe that management has addressed these risks very effectively, and that they will be successful. But right now they have no revenues, lots of debt, etc. . . If--no, WHEN (!)--they are successful, I expect a 40X return on my investment in 5 years, minimum. All actions taken in the present period should be geared toward the home run, not a 25% uptrend in the next 90 days. Firstly, G has nothing to sell yet, so it may be a bit early to conclude that they are repeating the mistakes of Iridium.* It's not early on several issues, such as (1) irid being a competitor and in trouble. You don't want to do anything at this point to help irid remain a competitor. It would be best--I believe--if irid's potentially cheap minutes were not around when G* starts operation. This is because: a. any initial customers irid signs up are customers that would have signed up with G. We need sufficient demand for handsets to encourage the phone makers to ramp up production faster than their minimum contract with G says they must. b. irid's continued existence allows for price competition to exist in the market. Since they will in any case by October have written off the in-place investment (either actually or de facto) they will price according to the need to cover operating costs. Thus, they will essentially have a cost advantage over G, whose infrastructure costs and debt must be depreciated and amortized. (2) As Valueman has said so well, initial reactions tend to be permanent reactions. The impression must be that G is offering real value-added. That means a valuable product at a good price. If the initial perception is that the cost to the user doesn't provide value, it will be hard to get that potential user to become an actual user. Ps.--I'm not unhappy. Just concerned, because these issues (pricing and handset availability) have been identified often on this thread as crucial to success. And Valueman's information flies in the face of what had been settled--by the brilliant minds on this thread--as a good path to success.

To: Ok2Launch who wrote (5513)	7/3/1999 12:19:00 AM
From: Johndee	Respond to of 29987

Ok, VOILA johndee

To: Ok2Launch who wrote (5513)	7/3/1999 10:16:00 AM
From: djane	Respond to of 29987

Nice recommendation of GSTRF and LOR in upcoming Fortune article [The term "visionary" is looking better and better...] pathfinder.com Street Life: Musings from a Big-Think Analyst Kiril Sokoloff: "We're looking at the Internet in terms of creative destruction." Andrew Serwer Kiril Sokoloff has always danced to the beat of a different drum. Only problem was, for years he couldn't hear the music. You see, Sokoloff is a big-think, independent investment analyst who sells his research to the likes of Julian Robertson, Steve Wynn, and Edgar Bronfman Sr. And remarkably, for much of his career Sokoloff has been deaf because of a genetic condition that surfaced when he was a teenager. Sokoloff, now 51, started at Citicorp but went out on his own in 1977. "I wanted to study the strategies of the world's greatest investors," he says from his Boca Raton office. (He also has digs in Sun Valley.) "I spent a lot of time looking at 13D filings, so I called my company 13D Research." Sokoloff correctly predicted there would be a wave of takeovers in the 1980s. Then he delved into distressed securities. Then the boom and bust of emerging markets. And today? Not surprisingly, Sokoloff is focusing on digital technology and the Internet. But unlike Wall Street's madding crowd, he isn't slicing and dicing Amazon's latest numbers. "We're looking at the Internet in terms of creative destruction," he says. "Who are the losers? What's going to happen to sales tax, and how will that impact state tax revenues and budgets? What will the Internet do to commercial property values? Will it destroy corporate profits?" Okay, Kiril, but what about the winners? "We like a broadband technology called local multipoint distribution devices. It's the lowest-cost, highest-bandwidth way to go into office buildings. We like Nextlink, which is 50% controlled by Craig McCaw. Also Teligent--Alex Mandel's company--and Winstar." Satellite telecommunications is another favorite venue. "There is no way fiber and copper cable can cover the entire world" he says. "Cellular is still a huge growth business, and satellites are the most cost-effective way for it to grow. We like Global Star, which has Soros and Sid Bass as investors." Loral and Hughes Electronics are two more. What else? Sokoloff sees opportunity in drugs, particularly in outfits that help giant pharmaceuticals companies bring drugs to market more efficiently. "The top ten drug companies introduce about five drugs a year at $350 million each. Only one in ten ever recoups its costs." Two names he likes--both of which cut costs for big drug companies by managing clinical trials--are Quintiles Transnational and Covance. One reason Sokoloff is so keen on medical research is his deafness and--I'm happy to say--his triumph over that handicap. Three years ago he was fitted with breakthrough implants that restored his hearing 50% to 70%. "After my operation, I was having Thanksgiving dinner with Jack Hemingway [the author's eldest son] in Sun Valley," says Sokoloff. "Jack kind of mumbles and has a mustache, so I had never been able to understand him, but now I could. It was an emotional moment for us both." Issue date: July 19, 1999 Vol. 140, No. 2