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Pastimes : John Dessauer's Investors World -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Verve who wrote (2156)	9/14/1999 11:27:00 AM
From: DWB	Respond to of 2346

Ron, I don't need to attack your reply, if that's the best you can come up with in 3 days of time, you're going to have to work a lot harder than that. Maybe you should try again at the craps tables, cause you're seem to be still throwing snake eyes. While it's laughable to use 1 quarter as a baseline for annual performance, especially in a highly seasonal business like the one LSI is in, let's address these one at a time… Word for word, eh Ron? Then why did you leave off the last sentence of that same Pro Forma note, which states "The summary combines the results of operations as if Symbios had been acquired as of the beginning of the periods presented." You wouldn't be trying to shade the truth now, would you Ron? How close to 30% is AROUND 30%? Especially when in the next statement you shout at us that they will even have a chance to exceed those numbers? Doesn't sound like 30% should be a big problem if you're shouting that they'll exceed, so why the big fuss, unless you're just trying to distract us? $2,057 to $2,089 … That's what you came up with for total Revenue for the year (adding your numbers). Amazing how I wound up with the same thing for my final value. So where's the big problem? The problem resides in that you want to use one 3 month period as an approximation for a 12 month period of performance, and I want to use the previous 12 months. Tell me something Ron, is there any seasonality to LSI's business? Think they sell more product prior to the Christmas season than any other time? Don't you think that there might be some fluctuation in those numbers? Obviously not, since you want to use the 4th quarter as representing the entire year. I get a real kick out of your percentage values too, were you a math major in college by any chance? Since when can you add up sequential incremental growth numbers to get the annual number? In case you can't figure it out, each time, you're adding a percentage of a larger base, so you are once again mixing apples and oranges. Let me give you an example, if I have $5 revenue to start, and get $10 more 3 months later, $15 more 3 months later, $20 more 3 months later, and $25 more 3 months later, your chart would have looked like this: $5 baseline $10 - 100% growth $15 - 50% growth $20 - 33% growth $25 - 25% growth So going from 5 to 25 yields a total of 205% growth… NOT.. you can't add the sequential incremental percentages, unless you're a doofus. I also love how the Pro Forma numbers are just an abstract guess, but it's not a guess to use the fourth quarter numbers to represent a year's worth of reality…. Not trying to shift our focus, are you Ron? Pro Forma numbers are given for a reason. They provide a much more educated guess than just taking one point in time (fourth quarter results) and drawing a line from there…. So tell me Ron, what is the 1998 annual revenue you are using for a basis. Not 1 quarter, but for 12 months (that's usually what annual and annualized means...). I'm sure LSI IR would love for people to believe they are growing at an annual rate of 30%, and feel free to think that if you want. But wanting it to be so, doesn't make it so. DWB

To: The Verve who wrote (2156)	9/14/1999 1:11:00 PM
From: DWB	Respond to of 2346

OH, and here's another hot one from your "reply" "And one reason for that is that Symbios was never a publicly traded entity. They were, if effect, a private company and even LSI isn't entirely sure what the actual revenues for the first 3 quarters of the year were for Symbios. So while every other figure in LSI's 10K is warranted as accurate, the pro forma number is their best shot (guess) and they tell you so. " So LSI spent all that money for a company, but they don't know what the revenue was??? PUHLEEEAZE! Just because YOU don't know the numbers, don't think that they don't. So I guess since Symbios wasn't a "publicly" traded company, they didn't keep any books... what a laugh. I can't believe you wrote "LSI isn't entirely sure what the actual revenues for the first 3 quarter of the year were for Symbios." Do you think all the people in accounting were vaporized during the merger? Why wouldn't they know how much product Symbios sold, and for what price? What a totally goofy statement. DWB