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

To: Captain Jack who wrote (74754)	1/1/2000 11:37:00 AM
From: Elwood P. Dowd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

elwood & dionysus: by: brian_cranston 12/31/1999 7:55 pm EST Msg: 127362 of 127377 two things have me VERY bullish on CPQ in 2000: Wildfire and 8-way intel servers. CPQ has stated that they will have 90% of the 8-way server market by years end, and that 2000 sales will be 2 to 3 times some analyst's forcasts. There should be good money to be made here for awhile... they aren't commodities yet. also here are a few bits from SKC which confirmed my suspisions that Wildfire's delay has given SUNW and HWP a free run at CPQ's expense. Wildfire was originally supposed to ship near the end of 1998. because of the delay, all the dot com's which needed to expand their systems for the busy holiday season turned to SUNW systems. even Amazon.com, which to my knowledge has run mostly all CPQ systems (a combination of both alpha systems and proliant systems), turned to SUNW because CPQ had no competitive offering: -------------------------------------- There's no doubt that WildFire is late out of the starting gate. Indeed, Compaq initially projected late-1998 availability for the TurboLaser followon. Unfortunately, the firm ran into problems designing and fabricating some of the custom ASICs for the WildFire platform. During the past year, Compaq's high-end hiatus has been exploited by Sun Microsystems, and more recently by Hewlett-Packard. The new GS-series should place Compaq's high-end server lineup in an enviable competitive position vis-a-vis Sun's UE10K and HP's V-Series offerings. In addition, Compaq's WildFire should be a formidable competitor for IBM's soon-to-ship 24-CPU RS/6000 S80 “Condor” server. -------------------------------------------- here's another bit from SKC which estimates that CPQ may have as many as 2000 first day orders for Wildfire, which may add as much as $1 billion in revenue from the get-go: -------------------------------------------- WildFire systems have been up and running at seed sites for almost two months, and Compaq reportedly is experiencing extremely strong demand for the new high-end servers. When DEC introduced the AlphaServer 8x00 TurboLaser in April 1995, the firm boasted of more than 1K firm orders on Day One. Given the year-long delay in the availability of WildFire, SKC expects that pent-up demand will translate into a significantly higher Day One order rate when WildFire makes its formal debut in 1CQ00. Indeed, Compaq may be able to claim close to 2K orders when WildFire reaches the First Revenue Ship milestone. (Sun Microsystems' Starfire, by contrast, took almost a year to reach the 1K shipment level). Using even a conservative 1K order rate, WildFire will significantly contribute to Compaq's FY00 AlphaServer revenue stream. Assuming a relatively modest average system price of $1M, WildFire should boost Compaq's high-end revenues by as much as $1B right from the get-go. (SKC believes two factors led Compaq to opt for a 1CQ00 Wildfire launch date. Production constraints—the new GS-series systems are being built in Compaq's soon-to-close Salem, NH facility—and Y2K lockdown issues probably caused the firm to schedule a CY00 rollout date.) --------------------------------------------