To: gdichaz who wrote (12753 ) 12/14/1999 10:29:00 AM From: Wyätt Gwyön Read Replies (2) | Respond to
Chaz, thanks for your post. I just kind of jumped in here yesterday without being aware that you had made a primate (or royalty? I will have to read the back posts!) proposal for SNDK. I owned SNDK in the summer--bought in the 30s, sold (too soon) around 50. I have read Ausdauer's excellent thesis several times. One thing I think it does not really address, though (and this is my concern about SNDK), is the extent to which the co. has an IPR lock on CF. The thesis presents good arguments for nonvolatile storage as a tornado, and for CF as being superior to other options, but I did not come away convinced that SNDK has the kind of IPR lock that QCOM has on CDMA. It may indeed have such a lock, but as an individual investor, you either make the leap of faith, or are fortunate to have a bunch of people like Clark Hare, engineer, GP, and others around to make such things comprehensible. I just have not seen that level of analysis on SNDK. That, plus the fact that the Q has been such a great investment, has kept me away. I was very intrigued when the stock started plummeting after the earthquake. I think I may have even done a trade or two on it. But my attitude there would have been more like a swing trader; would not have had anywhere near the conviction that I have had investing in the Q. I congratulate you for making a move on the stock when it was way oversold. If you can provide the sort of explanation of Sandisk's (purported) IPR stranglehold (not just the number of patents, but rather, why certain patents are crucial to anybody wanting in the CF arena, just as we have heard about soft handoff, etc. being crucial for CDMA), then I could indeed become more intrigued by the company.
