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Technology Stocks : Cognos Inc. - COGN -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Marc Fortier who wrote (1016)	2/20/2000 3:36:00 PM
From: Sultan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1109

I saw that.. And I think some of the arguments he make, specially in terms of competition from Seagate etc. does not really wash.. Couple of years back it was Oracle or Microsoft that was going to kill these guys off. As for competition, there have always been HUMC, HYSL, ARDT, SGNT, BRYO, MSTR, INFA, BOBJ etc. and they all have overlapping market segments. It is not as clean as he makes out to be. The fact is the market is growing and all of these guys are getting a piece of the action. COGN mangement has always maintained that it takes 6 months or more once they add to sales force, before it really starts to show up in the bottom line and it seems he does not like that as an answer. Seems he is a bit put off also with COGN being more aggressive and looks like he is attributing that to company's share price... Actually COGN was always aggressive before they started watching bottom line more then top line.. and the net results was BOBJ recovered from their mishaps and COGN started to lag.. Now that they are aggressive, this guy is discounting it.. Typical canadian behaviour.. Of course he also ignores gains made in terms of share price appriciation by virtually all BI sector candidates. So in that sense high lighting just COGN raises why, in terms how impartial he is.. I don't like analysis that is a bit skewed because I am never sure of the agenda.. For instance he talks about how smaller companies tend to go for COGN and bigger ones to BOBJ but then he has not touched upon a lot of large names that COGN releases as part of their client wins.. As for BOBJ vs. COGN, it has always been too close to call and difficult to call because of over lapping quarters... He also is ignoring the fact that one of the driver for BOBJ is the price on Paris because there are limited tech stocks to play and that tends to push up the price on Nasdaq depending on what is happening in Paris.. So it is not only the investors thinking BOBJ is doing better that is pushing up the price on Nasdaq.. A bit more complex.. There is no question however that BOBJ has market's attention more so and volume and volatility on BOBJ share price makes it great for traders... So all in all, I will go with what management releases in terms of contract etc. Their new product releases coming up, which is cleaner and integrates the products better and now more of a competition to BOBJ, and actually analysis posted by Carl here on the thread makes it a bit more even handed in terms of valuation.... As to what happens to COGN and competitors' share price over time, will I guess depend on the markets and individual company's progress. As to whether you would hold or fold, COGN or any other in the sector, it has to be a personal decision... Markets are nervous in general.... FWIW...>

To: Marc Fortier who wrote (1016)	2/20/2000 9:47:00 PM
From: Carl R.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1109

A very poorly thought out piece, I'd say. First of all, the author apparently is under the impression that the day after you hire a programmer you can begin selling his work. In actual fact I would guess that the impact will not really be felt for 12-18 months. Then the author makes an apples to oranges comparison to justify a claim that BOBJ is bigger than COGN. In actual fact the best quarter of the year for BOBJ is the December quarter, and the best quarter of the year for COGN is the February quarter. Comparing the December BOBJ quarter to the November COGN quarter is favorable to BOBJ, and comparing the March quarter to the February COGN quarter will be favorable to COGN - but the author won't be around to do that. Are the increased expenditures at COGN producing results? No question about it (probably the sales staff increases more so that the R&D increases, at least so far). In actual fact the growth rate of COGN is clearly accelerating. Looking solely at the BI part of COGN, the year over year growth rate was languishing between 26-32% until two quarters ago, when the growth rate increased to over 40%. The last two quarters have shown year over year growth rates of 42.4% and 41.4%. How about the competition? BOBJ has has year over year growth in the 45% range for some time. This has not changed recently. As for BRYO, they have been running at about 68% recently. MSTR has been around 90%, and SGNT has been a bit over 100%. Basically the article reinforced my opinion that BOBJ is way overvalued relative to COGN. COGN is still larger, COGN is now growing at about the same rate, COGN is spending more heavily to assure future growth. I'll keep my money here, Carl