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

To: Sam who wrote (1222)	11/30/1999 1:25:00 PM
From: Robert Douglas	Respond to of 1989

Sam, I don't think Luczo ruled out the possibility of a buyout. They would just do it under the guise of acquiring technology. As in, "We are acquiring Maxtor to get their 10 gig technology." He is certainly right that not much is gained in market share from doing an acquisition. I think most of his talk was bluff, although he seems quite confident about Seagate's technology. On a different matter. I was just over on the TIVO web site considering a purchase for Christmas. My conclusion was that I will wait until the hard drives get bigger. The reason is that the 14 hour version is actually only a 4 hour maximum if set on the highest quality - the one for sports. That's barely one football game! We've spent the last couple of months on these boards bemoaning the fact that there are few applications for gigantic disk drives. Well, I sure would like a 100 gig baby on that TIVO machine! -Rob

To: Sam who wrote (1222)	11/30/1999 2:20:00 PM
From: Kevin Linder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1989

Sam - I think Luzco ruled out a purchase/acquisition of WDC. MXTR and HDD could be bought our for their mid range desktop "technology" or in the case of HDD they would also be acquiring DLT/SDLT. That would mean a throwaway of LTO, but I am getting real pessimistic about that as time goes on. His discussion also might leave a opening for Fujitsu because of notebook hard drives. Overall I think he really might have been leaving an acquisition strategy on the table for one of the independent component makers - RDRT; KMAG; Applied Magnetics. I would be interested in hearing from the more knowledgeable people on this thread about what might fit and the strong/weak candidates. Kevin Linder

To: Sam who wrote (1222)	11/30/1999 5:57:00 PM
From: Mark Madden	Respond to of 1989

Sam - I think the interview showcased Luczo's wishful thinking. At his last conference call he indicated that competitors with financial constraints would have to cut back research and development. He stated that this would hurt their next generation products. Somehow I kept thinking he was hinting at RDRT. RDRT has some financial constraints but they seem to keep their research going strong. Earlier this month they demonstrated a new record at 36 gb per square inch. As you mentioned, the 10 gb drives in production prove the independent suppliers are not behind now. If RDRT falters I'm sure IBM would be happy to step in. I think Luczo's most significant statement is about focusing on automation. Seagate has always had a high employee to sales ratio indicating they are not as automated as other drive companies. Automation may reduce costs for high production drives. I think it may be automation that helped Fujitsu and Maxtor produce low cost drives. I just hope cost savings is turned into profit instead of lower prices. Regards, Mark