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

To: chirodoc who wrote (1149)	10/26/1999 11:53:00 AM
From: Lane Hall-Witt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1412

SPYG's business does not depend entirely on the success of the microbrowser (or any of its other products, for that matter). That's the good thing about the service side of SPYG's business: it serves as a hedge against the intense competition on the software side. That said, SPYG has had a number of wins on the licensing side -- although many of these agreements are not yet generating much revenue because the non-PC market is still in its early stages of commercial development. The Xerox deal is an important exception, as this licensing deal alone generated 5 percent of SPYG's revenues last quarter. Additional licensing deals with Motorola, General Instrument, Inktomi, etc., all suggest that SPYG's client and server software both are commercially viable. I didn't buy into this stock with hopes of a takeout in mind, but there's no doubt that SPYG should be an attractive acquisition target for many of the bigger players in the information-appliance space.

To: chirodoc who wrote (1149)	10/26/1999 1:16:00 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1412

Harmon is looking at only parts of the picture, rather than the whole. The way I see it is that SPYG has a foothold not just in portables (i.e., small screen devices with limited graphics and text capabilities) but also set top TV boxes and a variety of non-PC applications involving access to information on the Internet. Also, the past history of the company is not a good predictor of the future because the company has changed its business plan and its management. It has moved from a more or less conventional software development - copyright revenue company to a software development/consulting services firm with less emphasis on sales to end users and more on services to information providers and equipment manufacturers. One of the unknowns is the new management, which appears to be quite good in terms of background. Another plus is the quality of the software professionals working for the company. This is a period of EXTREME shortages of good programmers. If SPYG can hold onto its personnel, it is probably going to succeed if only because its services are in great demand, even to the point of a takeover. Recall that AMAZON.COM recently bought a whole software firm just to get the services of the firms's software staff. The same could happen here too.