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Technology Stocks : Datastream Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: DSTM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Shane M who wrote (651)	7/29/1999 1:05:00 AM
From: Wright Sullivan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 721

Shane- I can see mixed messages in various aspects of DSTM's performance, but I continue to think there is much more potential on the upside than the downside. Additional comments: -I think they are doing a good job reinventing the company around web based architecture (MP2i, MP5i). This is a huge leap forward from a customer's point of view and I expect we'll see results from this starting next quarter (not this quarter). Big selling point. -I am glad they are making the investment in the dot.com stuff also. On one hand, $550,000 is a pretty small commitment to make to something that they think is "the next big thing". On the other hand, they are trying to ramp up the dot.com aspects carefully and they contrasted their steady ramp-up with PSDI's aggressive effort which may have one or two active users now. If they just throw money at it, earnings will suffer and results may be questionable. $1.5 million dot.com expenses this quarter sounds about right. The question clearly is how the market will react to this investment. Will they punish the projected drop? Is a drop already factored into the low price? Or will dot.com fever strike? If so, when? My guess is that we may see 10-11 again soon, and then much higher a year from now. -I think license revs are lower because they keep software cost low to go after market share and to sell consulting services. This may not be what the street wants (licensing has higher margins than services), but it seems right to me. -I am very pleased to see MP2 client server sales so strong. I think that this is the future for CMMS. The cheap stuff (MaintainIt) is only to get customers and MP2 file server is still too low cost to be extremely profitable. MP2 client server is in a sweet spot of the market, where you can do significant volume, but the price is high enough (in the tens of thousand $) that it is profitable. -PSDI is still a strong competitor (despite DSTM's oft-stated win percentages) in the high end (MP5). But I believe that these highly customized MP5 enterprise systems will eventually be displaced by the growing capability of MP2 client server, where DSTM is strong and PSDI is weaker. -I saw something on Ariba on the web yesterday. If that's our competition, we probably have at least a year before they get their act together in the e-MRO space. DSTM should have a bit of time to find their niche. -Some decent discussion amongst the din on yahoo DSTM board since the cc. Analysis4Profit's comments worth reading, as always, though I don't see EquityHound sniffing around there much anymore <vbg>. Always appreciate hearing your comments, -Wright