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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bryan C. Simpson who wrote (28662)	10/20/1999 11:37:00 AM
From: Paul Fiondella	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

Growing pains at Novell and just pains in general As someone whose family has both a Jewish and a Mormon branch, after all isn't this America, I think Waldy was just misdirecting his frustration. There isn't any place anymore in America for bigotry. We are all guilty of these type of unthinking remarks from time to time. I apologize for him. He who is without sin cast the first stone. The other aspect of what Waldy is saying shouldn't be lost on some of the younger folks posting here. You are a stockholder. If you want to be raped, pillaged, and plundered, there are plenty of people out there that will do it to you --- as Danti pointed out wiith the momentum players. If you don't demand that the executive management of Novell act in your interests, don't expect that will just happen while you sit passively by. As Andy Grove said very clearly in his book a few years back, "Only the paranoid Survive", often times senior management is totally unaware of what is really happening in a company. Clearly Eric thought Slitz was on board when people here were posting that he wasn't. And we are not Novell employees! Yet Slitz walked away with several million dollars of Novell profits when he walked. That's our money. We have to help Eric make the right decisions. His biggest challenge is to be more creative in his management. He has to move faster with a second level of reorganization to get better results or he has to sell the company. Waldy at least calls the BOD. I would advise anyone with a stake in Novell to write one of the BOD members or try to talk to them about going for a buyout. It's the right time to consider this. IT doesn't represent any failure of Novell but rather a realistic assessment of the options. A buyout is a reasonable option for Novell. Really there isn't any reason for people in the upper echelons of management to be walking away with millions and millions of dollars unless there is something to show for that in the way of real results. To be honest I would have made these options more conditional upon Novell achieving either a growth rate in excess of 20% for four quarters or using the average quarterly earnings of the past seven or so years of about $.17, I would have tied the bonuses to some level above this average for profitability. You can argue with my number but the philosophy has to be deliver results or leave. Too many Novell executives appear to have insulated themselves against the market with a protective good old boy network that doesn't look at whether they have succeeded according to the markets criteria of success. Even Eric shows this Novell habit on occasion --- as he did with his remarks at the Morgan Stanley conference. Marketing at Novell is a disaster from the get go. You have technology stock analysts coming on CNBC that have never heard of Novell! Can you beat that! In such circumstance you either approach this like Lincoln did with his generals or you lose the war. If you see you are going to lose the war you make peace. In this instance peace is a friendly buyout with a company with better marketing to compliment your engineering depth. These choices are facing a rather young and inexperienced CEO. But he has to make them. Instead of sitting passively by as shareholders we should help him understand the situation and deal with it.