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Technology Stocks : Safeguard Scientifics SFE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katherine Derbyshire who wrote (3377)	8/23/1999 3:15:00 PM
From: still learning	Respond to of 4467

I agree with katherine, except that I think SFE should work more on its "exit strategy" for companies like CATP, one where they've left tens of millions of $$ on the table by not selling any significant shares even though were' 5 years or more past IPO. TLAB, in effect is a 1 yr holding. There may or may not be better times to sell it, but there sure as @#$# have been many better times to deleverage CATP, especially since it dominated their portfolio for so long. I seriously wonder why they've not sold when there was no good reason to keep it -- the stock was strong, liquid market, good other investments. I said this at the time they were selling TLAB and before, even. There's a fine line between nurturing and hanging on forever. SFE should look for ways to sll off some big chuncks of major assets to put them into new startups -- the thing they do best. They should also consider buying their own shares instead of just their holdings sometimes. I can hardly imagine why they needed to float a dilutive bond offering when they could easily have raised $30-50 million via stock sales of CATP. This is clearly an ax to grind for me and is probably the one glaring mistake I've seen SFE make in recent memory. BTW, they also should have been buying ICGE on day one as the KNEW it would do well, and I hope they made some open market purchases in the $15-20 range.