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Technology Stocks : Loral Space & Communications -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Timothy R. Tierney who wrote (6565)	8/5/1999 1:30:00 PM
From: Jeff Vayda	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10852

Just for fun Tim, what are your parameters for determining a 'rocketship or a dude'? What do you plan to measure? If the ramp up is not to your expectations at day X, what is to say the ramp up will not increase on day Y, surpassing your datum? I am hesitant to draw a line in the sand and say "By this day ...." It must be done eventually, but too many times have I left the game early only to have a ninth inning home run change everything. (Anyone remember Hedi?) Just throwing some ideas around. Has anyone else established a firm set of requirements? (numbers and/or dates) I have not - that is why I am giving Loral until the spring 2000 before I seriously re-evaluate my positions. (Drastic events excluded) Even that is early as Loral is pointing to end of 2000 as the breakeven time frame. Jeff Vayda

To: Timothy R. Tierney who wrote (6565)	8/5/1999 3:45:00 PM
From: Rocket Scientist	Respond to of 10852

T.Tierney--I don't agree with your time frame "two months to 10 weeks on the outside two months to 10 weeks on the outside to determine if Loral/G* is a rocket or a dud" I expect service rollout to start slowly and not earlier than early October, and probably not in N. America until even later. Unless mgmt changes its policy, subscription rates will be reported in terms of billed minutes of use, and not very timely, either. We may not get such info for 4Q99 until Feb2000. And then wait another three months to see MoU for 1Q00. Bottom line, I expect it's more like 12 months until we really have basis for confidence in the usage ramp-up (three quarters of operation). Of course, by then, if the performance meets the plan, we'll be at least EBITDA neutral, selling handsets at a rate of 100K+/month, and the GSTRF stock will be approaching 100$/share. But the road from here to there will be a rough one, and fraught with peril, IMHO.

To: Timothy R. Tierney who wrote (6565)	8/8/1999 10:35:00 AM
From: Lu_Xun	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10852

I completely disagree with your "2 months to 10 weeks" time horizon for judging the success of G. Remember that they don't even begin offering service anywhere in the world until early October and even then the service is likely to be available in only a few countries. The hard reality, as I understand it, is that the additional gateways necessary for truly worldwide service will be gradually rolled out over the following six to eight months. My opinion, therefore, is that all G longs should brace themselves for revenue "disappointments" during that period because the real buildup in revenues won't occur until all the gateways are up and running and the SPs have had an adequate amount of time to market the system to their customers. All this is going to take TIME and G* investors like myself should be prepared to be PATIENT for the revenues to be realized. Don't misunderstand me. I am NOT saying G* will fail. To the contrary, I am way long on GSTRF and LOR both. I am convinced that the demand is there and it is massive. But like any other new product or service, it is going to take time to market it. In the meantime, the stock prices of both GSTRF and LOR may take some significant hits as the impossibly high expectations of their investors for immediate success slam into the wall of reality. Lu Xun