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Non-Tech : Berkeley Technology Limited (BLKYY) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: xcr600 who wrote (256)	4/14/2000 2:17:00 PM
From: J. Conley	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 955

x, I am not selling any LDP at this level. My view is that if you did not sell earlier, why sell now and give the stock away in the midst of extreme pessimism. Of course, everyone can make up their own mind. I reviewed the Yahoo! board today and noted the post set forth below. I agree with the poster's comments about Malone, and in general comments regarding the valuation of the financial services arm. The VC arm is being perceived as being close to worthless right now. The following courtesy of "appelled" on Yahoo! If you've seen this, disregard the rest of this post. >>>Preamble -------- All that matters at the end of the day for any company is cash in the bank - or assets. The latter is where science sometimes turns to art, even more so with projections. Conservative estimates are good. The so-called (laughably) "new economy" does not exist. There is only one economy and ever will be. The phrase may have been conceived innocently enough to describe a technological era, but has been hijacked to mean something else. I am with Greenspan on this. He said in his address to the Senators commitee that he was aware that there were real and measurable increases in productivity brought about by technologies, but didn't know if this increase in productivity is sustainable or not. He adopts a wait-and-see approach. LDP Value --------- "Sum of the parts" - FBR had the title correct. We can argue the numbers. Incidentally Heather Hunt and Liz Malone the authors are insurance sector experts. In fact Ms Malone is a Managing director of FBR?s insurance division and her C.V. is stunning. I trust her valuations for the finance parts for LDP, and as Mike pointed out a 1:1 on premium sales is a good rule of thumb guide, plus you can do discounted cash flow models and come up with similar figures. Indeed it is because insurance and annuities are "old economy" well understood industries that we can be reasonably confident of their valuations - give or take. It is not lost on her that LDP operate an 11-hour day due to the coast-coast nature of the business, and have embraced technology (going back to productivity gains there) - something that the rest of the wooden insurance and annuity industry has not done. So it is arguable that they should in fact attract a premium to their piers. However we are not talking about the fine-tuning of valuations here. Since FBR?s target for the financial services is $15.66 including cash at hand, if we halved that and said say $8 we can?t be accused of over exuberance. It would in fact be excessively bearish, but as you might guess even with that we are not far of that value discounting any of the equity operations at all. So as you say book value on private equity of $2.80 without the 9x multiple that FBR give it, and the public portfolio at today?s closing value of $225M or $3.51/share. Total would be $8 + $2.80 + $3.51 = $14.31. I don?t think it is possible to apply a more bearish calculation without getting silly. That I guess is why I have been buying again although I am as astonished as every other shareholder as to why it continues to drop. A more realistic calculation I believe would attract the $15.66 for the finance services that FBR give and the 9x multiple based on the NUFO home run and other hot properties, even in a hostile or unfavourable market some IPO?s will do well, but that is for the individual investor to decide. You can say 5x or 3x or 2x if you prefer. I think it is instructive that most of the shorts or professional bashers, whatever they are, concentrate on SABA DOWN 20% or other such tac-tics. They I expect know that most retail punters are looking at the minute-by-minute prices or the public portfolio and base decisions on it, regardless of any valuations. It is impossible though for LDP to sustainably attract a below NAV price and so I am regarding it as a buying opportunity. I think the mutual funds are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the lions to stop eating the Christians. When the carnage stops they will return, but I expect they have more idea of the day-to-day cash flow than I, so I cannot tell when that will be.<<<