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Technology Stocks : Westell WSTL -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: P314159d who wrote (17195)	10/23/1999 11:16:00 AM
From: Michael F. Donadio	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21342

<< Q:With an RD expense at 1.6m vs. some 7 m. per Q before, whoa. Guess WSTL can manage better than the rest of the hi-tech world, afterall!!!>> Pi, when Ed Moreau from Baird asked about the decrease in R&D, MZ said that the $1.6M for the quarter was misleading because it did not include the $3.1M they had received over the last 6 months from their partners for R&D. MZ did say that R&D was the "fuel of the future" and he planned to support it but was now relying upon partners for part of that budget. It reflects a cash strapped company trying to find a way to go forward. I see improving profitability, coupled with a clearer vision of market potential, putting this company back on the right track. MZ said that they are now willing to say the DSL is finally being deployed 5-7 years later than expected. One does wonder how the company so misunderstood the time to marketing of DSL and was "so ahead of its time" in one sense, and then was so totally left out when deployment began because the big players like ALA and CSCO got the business. They have had to run twice as fast to get to the same point they were at before the race began. Clearly there have been better investments over the last couple of years than WSTL. They seem to have had better technical ability then marketing savvy and may now be paying for it technically as well. I only hope they learned the 'hard way', and will avoid further missteps. Hindsight of course is 20/20 and who expected that RBOCs were ruled by "morons law" (as opposed to Moore's) as Gilder likes to reference it. Right now I see them poised to gain substantially in profitability. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Michael