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Technology Stocks : MRV Communications (MRVC) opinions? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Linkdog who wrote (14947)	8/9/1999 2:32:00 PM
From: Greg h2o	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42804

re:"befuddled as to why MRV is getting next to zero notice when Copper Mountain, Redback, Juniper and others, with products that are no better, and in some cases not as good as those of MRV, have market caps many times that of MRV - which incidentally has sales approaching $300 million." my take on the situation is all 3 of the companies you mentioned are recent ipo's. the underwriting firms all did great jobs of "hyping" the stocks to valuations that are comparable to "dot.com" companies. none of the companies have track records-- good or bad-- from which to guage reliablility of management or predictability of earnings. at mrv, both of these areas have recent low grades. i'm not provoking a debate on this, but rather stating a fact which can be reflected in the stock price. what will it take for mrv to remove these marks? well, they're well on the way... again, this can be seen by a stock price which has moved from 6 (on 3/31/99) to the recent 15 level. management is starting to take "shareholder value" as seriously as the shareholders do... management is starting to give the street a little guidance-- not only for earnings and revenue, but also for potential action plans to be put in place by the management and board. the specifics have been discussed ad nauseum on this thread.... sure, there's a long way to go, but it appears management is heading in the right direction. finally, execution is key. clearly, there is doubt as to whether management can properly execute their plans. rhetoric is cheap from these guys. the street was burned about 1 year ago, and they don't forget quickly when it comes to companies of this size. if you believe management can execute, it's still a steal at these levels, but there are clearly those betting against it....

To: Linkdog who wrote (14947)	8/9/1999 2:46:00 PM
From: Bruce L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42804

<<I am just befuddled as to why MRVC is getting next to zero notice....I'm starting to question our collective analysis>> Good question and I share the same query re our collective analysis because I too lack Sector's expertise. But here's my explanation of why the startups are getting such high market caps. The startups have no "baggage," meaning no prior history and - like the internuts - no earnings. That means expectations and possibilities are unlimited. Many of them will eventually come back to earth but in the meantime they have momentum. MRVC, on the other hand, has a spotty history and expectations are (unfairly) bound by what its done in the past. For MRVC, investors and the Street have a "show me" attitude. What keeps me in MRVC as heavily as I am is that all trends as far as I know are positive, especially the FACT that the stock is being accumulated. After "Black Friday" (Aug 27, l998) institutions dumped MRVC like there was no tomorrow. This was pretty extreme distribution. Now, it's clearly being accumulated, but given the earlier distribution, this is a slower process than we'd like. Finally, it would take only one of the MRVC startups to hit to double the stock from today's price. As you may know, my pick is Hyperchannel

To: Linkdog who wrote (14947)	8/9/1999 2:47:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42804

<<Can we really be that far off in our analysis.>> IMO, No. <<The market is telling us that we are? Comments??>> I don't think the market is "smarter" than we are in terms of overall technical analysis of MRVC's products and prospects. MRVC carries a lot of baggage - resentment from lots of things (some of which were not under MRVC's control) - like Cabot letter, the drop after the secondary, the mishandled Q3 warning, etc. Also, what little "visibility" there was, MRVC undermined by saying they have a new startup and a new product in Q3 - and increased expenses for them. IMO, there are a lot of skeptics out there, waiting for MRVC to show them the money. That's fine by me as by the time they start being convinced about prospects, we are back in the $30s or higher some time next year. The pendulum always overshoots the center (full value). In our case the pendulum already hit max left (bottom) and is starting to come back slowly. Over 2-3 years I think the pendulum will continue moving right. I don't anticipate an overshoot until some time in 2001. The "independent" valuing of MRVC's divisions and the upcoming IPO should keep us moving up , although our range seems to be $14-$15.5 right now. I have already made 3 round trip trades in that range and have my next buy already in. Patience (and good trading while you are waiting)