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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lucinos who wrote (27125)	7/22/1999 2:58:00 PM
From: William Hunt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Thread ---WE don't need Greenspan to talk the stock down ---just let MSFT management do the job ! ----Microsoft Corp. Dow Jones Newswires -- July 22, 1999 DJ Microsoft's Ballmer Cautious About 2000 Rev Views By Paula L. Stepankowsky SEATTLE (Dow Jones)--Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) President Steve Ballmer cautioned analysts not to get too optimistic about the company's revenue growth in fiscal 2000. In a straw poll taken at the beginning of the company's annual meeting with analysts here Thursday, many of the analysts attending said they expect revenue to grow at a rate of 25% or more for the current fiscal year ending in June 2000. Ballmer said that would be a very big number, about $5 billion at current rates. He said he's excited about the innovations and new products the company will bring to customers this year, but "we will have competition like never, never before," he said, adding that there are still unknowns associated with the year-2000 computer issue. In the fiscal 1999 fourth quarter ended June 30, revenue rose 39% from a year earlier. In President Ballmer's presentation, and one that preceded it by Jeff Raikes, Microsoft's group vice president for worldwide sales and support, it's clear that the company will pay very close attention to the high-end business computing market in 2000. Ballmer said Windows 2000, the new name for the company's Windows NT product, will be a "very important product for our company." He said the company has still not given a specific release date, but he said it will have many improved features that will help the company keep its customers from jumping to Oracle, the Java system or Linux, operating software that's available over the Internet. "Every one of these things is a big contender sucking them away from Microsoft," Ballmer said of the competition for customers. "We have never felt more competition, but we have never felt more optimistic." Ballmer said that Microsoft is focusing in particular on the high-end data center and said that its competitors may have a sense of complacency about Microsoft's ability to compete at that level. "We've definitely scaled up into that space," Ballmer said, adding that Microsoft's advances in that area will become more apparent with the release of Windows 2000. Raikes said that in 1999, 81% of the company's revenue came from business applications. Ballmer said the company does view Linux as the first serious operating system competitor since IBM's OS/2 platform. Microsoft plans to add 1,000 people to its field sales force to promote its business applications in the next year. They include Windows NT Server and SQL Server, both of which sold very well in the 1999 fiscal year, Raikes said. Ballmer addressed the question of the recent departures of a number of long-time Microsoft senior executives. He said the company keeps finding and promoting new people, and that he feels sure the company's most senior executives will be with the company "until they are very old people." He added that overall, Microsoft's attrition rate is between 7% and 8%, less than the industry average. BEST WISHES BILL