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Technology Stocks : Lucent Technologies (LU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mr.Fun who wrote (10778)	10/28/1999 3:40:00 PM
From: Clay Takaya	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21876

Once again (broken record) thanks for the recap Mr. Fun. I am wondering if you can comment on Tucker's notion that short selling isn't even an issue here. I saw at least 2 analysts (Sagawa and Mr. Persona-non-grata Cramer) saying that some hedge funds were hugely short LU and that part of the recent rally was due to covering. Clay

To: Mr.Fun who wrote (10778)	10/28/1999 3:40:00 PM
From: GVTucker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21876

Mr. Fun: I really don't see why Mr. Tucker believes coming in with a lower tax rate is "sloppy", or why he wouldn't give them credit for it. Tax rate is a product of careful management planning - one of the "five simultaneous equasions" LU uses to track its progress. It's a little like not giving credit if COGS fell because component costs were lower. No, it isn't. The tax rate is easily manipulated quarter to quarter. COGS is not. Long term tax rate is indeed the product of careful management planning, but one quarter is not even close to long term enough. Given a choice of lower tax rate and worse gross margins, or higher tax rate and better gross margins, which would you choose? Whether or not LU met its promises depends on whether you use average balance or end of period measures No. Using ending balance, DSO decreased from 93 days to 91 days. Using average balance (as I do) DSO decreased 5 days to 87 days. Nobody out there had an estimate as high as 87 days. BTW this is not factoring a receivable - factoring specifically means turning a receivable over to a 3rd party for collections and accepting a % of the nominal value. What LU did with the Saudis was with the agreement of the customer, involved interest payments and was syndicated to a bank at full nominal value. Those two sound the same to me, only the semantics are different.