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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Hess who wrote (8675)	1/14/2000 9:28:00 AM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

Don and OT, a minor correction. Stocks are valued at the LOWER of cost or market value. You can see the significance of the accounting formality when you look at Seagate, whose holdings of companies, including Veritas and SanDisk, are worth more than the market value placed on Seagate stock. You might wonder why Seagate stock doesn't sell at a higher level. Probably because this largest disk drive maker is running losses on its main business.

To: Don Hess who wrote (8675)	1/14/2000 5:25:00 PM
From: quidditch	Respond to of 60323

Art and Don, true enough re. GAAP practice and impact on B/S; once a company holds an asset for sale, as in a position in its investment portfolio, you also have to mark it to FMV at that point. But by that time, an announcement re. a pending sale might be made public and the cat is probably out of the bag, if it is an important enough holding, and the value is no longer hidden. Btw, we spend night before New Year's Eve at friends: husband's gift from his wife: a (Sony) digital camera, apparently w/ an attachment for storage to a regular sized floppy. Steve

To: Don Hess who wrote (8675)	1/14/2000 8:47:00 PM
From: Craig Freeman	Respond to of 60323

Don, an excellent observation. To take the point to the extreme, consider the fact that Southern Pacific Railroad was given Federal grants for all the land upon which their tracks lied ... plus some extra space on either side. In California, SPC was typically granted rights to all the land from the shoreline to their track (as in "beachfront property). The entire value of this land portfolio was carried on their balance sheet at a sum of $1.00 per parcel (~10,000 parcels). When SPC entered merger talks in the late 70's, these holdings were made public for the first time. And suddenly SPC went from being a unprofitable, old railroad company to being the third-largest landholder in California! Balance sheets can be deceiving. Craig