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

To: Mehitabel who wrote (2434)	2/15/2000 11:22:00 PM
From: Lucky888	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10934

NTAP -- Just found out that even MAXTOR (MXTR) is trying to get into the NAS space: maxtor.com anyone care to comment on it? 1. What this will do to NTAP? 2. What this will do to MXTR's stock price? L.

To: Mehitabel who wrote (2434)	2/16/2000 8:47:00 AM
From: Lynn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10934

ML released their new (traditional read) research report on NTAP a few minutes ago titled, "Network Appliance SweetNAS." The report was written by Steven Milunovich and William G. Crawford and rates NTAP a BUY, BUY with a 12 month target of $185. It gives NTAP a 45% estimated growth for the next 5 years. Here are the highlights: 12 Month Price Objective: $185 Estimates (Apr) 1999A 2000E 2001E EPS: $0.23 $0.41 $0.60 Investment Highlights: · NAS is becoming a mainstream technology with significant demand pull in e-business applications, now 40% of sales. · Valuation is a stickler, but we're not overly concerned given that NetApp could be the next EMC. Our price objective of $185 is 35X our F2001 revenue estimate of $922 million. · The company announced a 2-for-1 stock split, the second in as many quarters. Fundamental Highlights: · Revenue of $151 million handily beat our estimate, doubling year-over-year. The sales cycle has shortened and sales productivity is up 10% from last year. · Management spent most of the upside on sales force expansion and increased customer and professional services support. EPS of $0.11 beat our estimate by a penny. · NAS may be a disruptive technology, undercutting server-attached storage in the long run. George Gilder's storewidth view argues that NAS “wastes” the “cheap” technologies of drives and bandwidth while SANs depend on more expensive microprocessors and labor. [end of report] Going back to Steve's bulletin I posted segments from yesterday, I think you just might have been right, Mehitabel, that despite the Gilder influence, Steve is in love. After all, that bulletin was released on Valentine's Day. Regards, Lynn

To: Mehitabel who wrote (2434)	2/16/2000 8:55:00 AM
From: Lynn	Respond to of 10934

Two paragraphs on NAS and SAN in the ML report for today on NTAP: NAS is ready now, SANs are not. The company correctly points out that today's SANs limit buyers to products from one or two companies. In contrast, NAS avoids the interoperability issue by accessing files through standards such as Ethernet and NFS and CIFS file systems. NAS is so simple to deploy that customers can trial the product before buying, a relatively difficult chore with SANs. Increasing data volumes and complexity are causing many companies to consider outsourced storage from vendors like Storage Networks. NAS could well be a fixture among such service providers. Increasing NAS adoption and the stock's rapid increase are attracting attention from the usual suspects. HP and IBM have announced products while EMC and others will do so in the first half of the year. Although NetApp stands to lose some sales to incumbents, the increased attention will help NAS awareness. The company's name is synonymous with NAS and the number of deals where NetApp is considered will increase. EMC touts its service edge, but NetApp is attempting to eliminate the issue by growing customer and professional services at two and a half times the overall company growth rate. We increasingly view NAS as a disruptive technology. The growth of the category is likely to more than compensate for increasing competition. Regards, Lynn P.S. Since I use SI Classic, I could not post this as a reply to the ML report highlights I just posted since I still have time to edit that one.