To: MulhollandDrive who wrote (1747 ) 12/6/1999 9:19:00 PM From: mthomas Read Replies (1) | Respond to
My opinion, FWIW, is the entire sector for NAS has been obscured and undervalued, just look at the price of BRCD......It is priced as though it is the only storage solution on the horizon. Some savvy invstors are now seeing that Fibre Channel may or may not be the ultimate solution......certainly for SAN managed storage it might be the best for quite a while...... but it is NOT the only solution......hence we will see the very best player in NAS get voted on up to partake of some of that market cap of BRCD, and get more evenly spread amongst other solutions. EMC has been overbought for so long I got out last March to let the bucks work better with other plays. The upcoming storage market tornado has fueled EMC to its current heights on the premise there are no other players worthy of investment.....Gilder has timed the release of the overview of storage development just right to get the attention focused on storage at this time, and it is correctly pointed at another solution, not SAN, not FC. I have been waiting and waiting, and studying, but with the release of that overview by Gilder I knew I better move now or regret my pause. So, I sold some other plays and bought into NTAP, with the view to buy into EMC once the market starts equalizing. My last buy was at 135, NTAP is *still* undervalued, because it has the technological cutting edge which EMC does not. EMC has the execution, customer support, and track record to justify its price, but its technology has not improved so much as to capture the "premium pricing" which technological solutions command in the market (viz. BRCD, with no earnings, at 300). I would not be surprised to see NTAP move up further before it stalls to recover to a solid base of above where it is now (150), until next earnings report or sector reports for sales. EMC has bled all it can out of the markets for a while, until it shows better earnings, or until market watchers know that sector sales are booming. Note: increased margins for software sales from EMC are helping its bottom line.....sometimes this indicates slowing installations of new equipment.....just a thought. Martin Thomas
