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Technology Stocks : Corel Corp. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kip518 who wrote (8140)	12/15/1999 9:00:00 PM
From: Scott Volmar	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9798

Which is worse, less than expected Q4 numbers, or O'Reilly's departure? Either Corel Linux will sell or it won't. Struggling over "hype" or revenue recognition is not going to change the "saleability" of Corel Linux. My bet is that Corel Linux will pick up speed as time rolls on. So does the market. And shortly, more of the market will too. With all the credit Dr. Cowpland has given to Mr. O'Reilly, I strongly doubt that he would struggle with him on numbers. Besides, I'll bet Dr. Cowpland prefers his stock up in the $44 range rather than in single digits. Without details we can speculate on the suddenness of the announcement, but Dr. Cowpland is showing plenty of gratitude, at least publicly, to Mr. O'Reilly. I'll bet beneath the surface there is probably a more simple reason for the announcement, and the "timing" of it. Here's my spectacle....ahem....I mean speculation: Mr. O'Reilly has been on the job about two years. He's probably a CPA at heart. He may have found he didn't enjoy the position, the pressures, the company culture, the industry, and maybe just the personalities. Mr. O'Reilly may have simply found the surge in the share price a convenient opportunity to exit. Who really can say unless more details are known. Maybe the market should wait until an announcement comes as to a replacement, then judge. We will all probably find that today's sell-off was overdone. Bullish, Scott

To: Kip518 who wrote (8140)	12/15/1999 11:24:00 PM
From: Fred Gohlke	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9798

The departure of two senior executives within a couple of weeks of each other is not a good sign. Whatever the stated reasons (and whether COREL or NOVELL), it is hard to miss the implication that the head honcho has an ego problem that interferes with the smooth functioning of the company's management. I've seen several posts suggesting that these defections are insignificant ... just as there were on the NOVELL board a short time back. Holding such a view may not square with investment success. Shutting one eye (winking) may allow one to enhance the result of a trade, but shutting both is more likely to be foolhardy. Incidentally, I am neither greatly impressed nor heavily influenced by the intense vilification, both pro and con, that has characterized some of the recent posts on this board. For those who care, I am substantially long CORL (although considerably less so than I was last week) and have been since before the Canadian authorities expressed their displeasure with the good doctor. I am not sure what I'm going to do next. I may hold, or I may not. The only thing you can be sure of is that I won't be sitting with my eyes closed hoping that all this blows over. Fred Oh, yes... Thanks for the post, Kip. I appreciate it. FLG

To: Kip518 who wrote (8140)	12/16/1999 1:58:00 AM
From: Kashish King	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9798

Well, we could be back to the channel stuffing scenario as Assad suggested. Corel will incorrectly assume revenues are going to grow substantially which has never proven correct. They always falter badly. With superior StarOffice being given away for free, it's not looking good. That leads one to ask: why didn't Sun strike a deal with dirt-cheap Corel when they had the chance? I think it's because they didn't want 80's bloatware and they also didn't trust Cowpland as he tried to blame Sun for their own incompetent development of a Java product. Cowpland commented last summer that the stock would go up in November. Those were not the words of a competent CEO in any company I know. Commenting on revenues is bad enough but to issue stock price movement predictions in a given four week period, eight weeks in advance? Does Mike drink? I remember he told everybody that the investigation into his trading practices was routine and nothing would come of it. Another example of inappropriate commentary from the CEO and it may have actually ensured that he got nailed. Now what? Well, there are gillions of Linux distributions out there and Cowpland is talking like Corel is doing more than stripping it down and slapping it on a CD-ROM. Sorry, that's all they are doing and you can get more and better distributions for free. Furthermore, he made a very bad mistake in speaking about and even, seemingly, for Redhat. Redhat is not focused solely on the server; they are aiming to dominate the desktop, too. Cowpland was talking through his own hat about redhat. That's the sort of irresponsible chatter that causes CFOs to resign. Guess what folks? Redhat is pushing StarOffice and the CEO of RH publicly dis'd Corel's office products! Gee, it looks like Mike bungled that WP on Linux opportunity of a lifetime! Well, to be fair that warmed-over 80's bloatware isn't going anywhere, no matter who's championing it.