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Technology Stocks : 3Com Corporation (COMS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: STEVE who wrote (41665)	3/11/2000 1:30:00 PM
From: KevRupert	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 45548

STEVE, you are right in your assessment. As always, David Taylor knows 3Com in & out. 3Com mgmt & directors have holdings, but STEVE asks "Isn't it in their best interests to see that we shareholders get maximum benefit, as they probably have even of their net worth more riding on this?" That is why the market is concerned. They have proven their incompetency many times over. A 3-5 year stock chart will show their ability to obtain maximum benefit for shareholders. Read any analyst report on 3Com sans Palm, any Value Line report on 3Com - and the company has performed miserably, and made horrible acquisitions in the past. They did not purchase Palm, knowing that it would offer the potential it did. They were very fortunate and lucky that Palm was included in the acquisition. ibd has a a/c/a rating for 3Com per the 3/10/2000. The 3rd A is for accumulation. How many posts would be on this thread sans Palm, what would the stock price of 3Com be sans Palm? That is what indicates mgmt's credibility to investors.

To: STEVE who wrote (41665)	3/11/2000 1:45:00 PM
From: Mehrdad Arya	Respond to of 45548

Steve, no one individual has more at stake than EB, according to the last count he owned over 2 million shares. At $100 a share that would be $200 million dollars, not bad Eric, just don't screw it up!!!! Personally I don't think he will, even if they do decided to purchase or leverage some of their shares I do not think it will be anything major that would diminish the value of 3Com. Remember even the BOD have a vested interest in making sure their holding are not diluted or diminished.

To: STEVE who wrote (41665)	3/11/2000 3:23:00 PM
From: David E. Taylor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 45548

Steve: I have no concerns over the PALM distribution. It will take place on schedule. Goldman & Co. wouldn't be involved in this otherwise, plus remember the underwriters are sitting on 3.45 million PALM shares that they got at the IPO price. Watch what happens to PALM when the quiet period ends and Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch can issue analyst coverage. But in the short term, that may or may not help COMS stock price, which IMO is far more dependent on what EB & Co. at COMS do and say than it is on PALM's stock price. Wish I'd realized that before. As to your first Q, the answer is "yes", but not as large as you might think. EB himself owns 1,788,817 shares/options of COMS, and all directors and officers as a group (including EB's holdings) own a total of 2,233,545 shares/options (all as of 12/31/99, may be more by now if they have any faith). So EB has the biggest stake. EB's holdings include 1,377,505 options exercisable within 60 days of 12/31/99 (with an exercise price equal to COMS market price as of the date of granting, probably between $30 and $45), I bet they're all shares by now, and it'll be interesting to see if he sells some of this stash in the next few months before D-Day. The answer to your second Q ought to be "yes", because if PALM holds to say $70 on D-Day and the 1.5 ratio doesn't change, EB & Co. will at least double their own net worth. It was that consideration that made me hang on to more than a small part of my pre-IPO COMS through the IPO itself (a smaller part since), because I felt sure that they would do everything they could to maintain COMS pre-IPO price and PALM's price post-IPO. EB's stellar performance on CNBC on 3/2 rapidly dissuaded me of that notion. It dissuaded plenty of other investors as well if the precipitous drop in COMS stock price after EB's cameo appearance is anything to go by. So I guess we'll see. Mehrdad may be correct that EB and the COMS BOD will not screw up this time. Their track record supports the more pessimistic view that they just may, and that they will probably be surprised when the street craters the stock in reaction. In the meantime, I'm going to hang on and watch. If they screw up, I'll be gone. If they do and say the right things, I'll grab more. There is one sure thing here - COMS is not going to just trade sideways at 70, so there's a lot more money to be made on COMS between now and D-Day. I just can't figure out if it'll be made on the upside or the downside. Now that the time premiums have come down to reasonable levels, maybe I should just buy 50% puts and 50% calls, write off the cost of one side of the trade, and quit worrying. David T.