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

To: Elwood P. Dowd who wrote (77961)	2/10/2000 8:55:00 PM
From: Andreas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

To Thread; I would highly recommend listening to the 30 minutes or so of the v-call telephone conference with Unterberg, Towbin, posted by Hio. I think it is excellent and certainly worth the time.

To: Elwood P. Dowd who wrote (77961)	2/11/2000 3:24:00 PM
From: Salah Mohamed	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 97611

El ... About Conflicting Statements >>>one of Compaq's big problems were the conflicting statements made recently by management to analysts<<< What do you want me to say?. In December, the main complaint of the analysts was that CPQ isn't giving any guidance. After the CC and the analysts meeting, it seems to me that the analysts are saying we are getting too much info, we are confused. Clearly, MC can't please all of them. But seriously, about the conflicting statements regarding growth rates, I listened to the CC and MC presentation to the analysts and I'm not at all confused. Since I was not invited to the analysts meeting, and MC chatted with them privately on the night before the meeting, and the Q&A at the end of the meeting is not available, I will allow myself some guessing on what happened and give a speculative scenario about growth rate. Here it is: 1. In the CC, MC said that their target for revenue growth is 15%. 2. In the private chat with the analysts, several of them told him that the 15% growth rate target is aggressive and 10% to 12% growth rate is more like it, based on the projected growth rates for the industry. 3. In his presentation to the analysts, MC told the analysts to model 10% - 12% revenue growth, but he is still shooting for 15%. He explained his position as follows: the industry growth rates published by research outfits (e.g.; IDC, Gartner, ...) for FY2000 are low, CPQ expects the actual industry growth rates will be much higher than the published numbers, and CPQ being the market leader in several segments of the market expects to share in this higher growth and gain market share. He even gave an example by one segment (cann't remember which) where one research outfit published projected growth rate for this segment and the day before the meeting another outfit came with three times the growth rate for the same segment. I don't want to defend MC or CPQ for that matter, but at least in my mind, I'm not confused. Also, I'm sure there are several people who listened to both the CC and MC presentation to analysts and may agree or disagree with me. I would like to hear both sides.