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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Daniel Chisholm who wrote (8366)	9/24/1999 8:17:00 PM
From: Michael Burry	Respond to of 79172

Daniel, Geez, I posted quite a long response from work. Evidently didn't post cuz I don't see it. I don't have the energy to go into it again. Go look at the 10Q's and 10Ks to see how big a problem it is for them to have to buy back stock at such high prices. We're talking in the billion-dollar range. The net is that they have to buy in stock to prevent dilution thanks to their lucrative stock compensation scheme. First 9 mos of 1999 they bought back 25 million shares. That's a significant drop-off from the prior few years, and scuttlebutt is that Gates himself has fretted about spending so much to buy back stock just to get back to even. Hey, when Gates wants something dirty done, who delivers the message? The Prez. Ballmer knew what he was doing. The shares out have expanded to over 5 billion as a result of the company's increasing reluctance to counteract the dilution with buy-ins at such high stock prices. Good investing, Mike