To: Z Analyzer who wrote (7260 ) 10/26/1999 5:48:00 PM From: Sam Read Replies (1) | Respond to
I've got some cash, but I haven't bought any Seagate recently (still have some from long ago, buried in a mattress). The reason I hesitate, aside from the nausea that the sector induces (obviously the best time to buy, when you can't think of one good reason to do so) is--Seagate still hasn't announced a 10 gig drive. What's the deal with them? They crow about how they're closing the gap in areal density in their CCs, but they appear to be months behind now. Plus that $400 million and some that they got for selling Veritas is already pissed away in restructuring this and that. Quinta is effectively dead. Close this, combine that, yakity yakity yakity. They couldn't get their Sandisk PEPs trust together to sell it before the earthquake took Sandisk's stock down to the 50s from the 80s, and now they say that they won't do it. That is, in this case, the right thing to do, and the fact is that their Veritas stock (presuming it remains even within about 30% of its current level) allows them the luxury of being able to screw up for years to come and still muddle through financially, but I don't like the way they seem to be missing on all cylinders, Stitch's glowing reports from the field notwithstanding. If they didn't appear to be so behind on the density curve (or if they buy Maxtor, or who knows, maybe Sanders will be hired to fix their desktop business, he seems to have done a pretty good job at Fujitsu), I wouldn't allow the other stuff to bother me as much. But they seem way behind, and all of these little things add up to a lot puzzlement and lack of enthusiasm for the company as an investment.
