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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (31856)	5/23/2000 6:06:00 PM
From: Captain Jack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

LOL!!! MUCH too little MUCH too late. Dead meat for a long time. At this price it is not even worth a tax write off. Not bad the new guy gets in and 2 weeks later runs for the hills-- he's no dummy. Maybe Eric will go next?

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (31856)	5/23/2000 6:49:00 PM
From: Paul Fiondella	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

Conference Call Just finished listening. They seem to be saying that revenue will pretty much be in the 265 million range for the next quarter. That would make Q1 -- $.13, Q2 -- $.09, Q3 -- $.02. About $.24 a share without Q4. That would put us well above Morgan Stanley's $.26 with a good Q4 or even minimal improvement in Q3. And it seemed that both Q3 and Q4 have much more upside potential if Novell can execute. (Expenses are increasing --- chiefly more money going into advertising and marketing campaigns and educational campaigns with the channel going forward, and that puts a damper on growth in earnings. The channel, until it gets straightened out, is putting the damper on revenue. So they have to put money here to straighten things out.) Nelson was optimistic about Q4 and the possibility of resuming major earnings growth. He said that many many eDirectory sales were in the pipeline. he announced a bunch of big wins today. There are many many more coming he said. The revenue and earnings figures projected forward were very conservative. They just don't want to get ahead of themselves given what happened with this quarter. The declining revenue problems were confined to the channel sales. This area was neglected in terms of training for the new products, sales support, and product promotion (as Eric said no air cover was provided for the resellers). Eric recognized it is the manufacturers responsibility to create the market for the product into which the resellers can then sell. Now if they straighten out the channel sales, which seems quite possible with all of the new product training and interaction they are going to start to do with the channel, they will learn from the channel what best can sell, and then if they fix this channel problem by Q4, they would be back on track. In other words fixing channel sales is the key to resuming more rapid growth. ============= The restructuring isn't cosmetic it is fundamental and very very positive. I found the four new divisions established by Novell to be exactly the ones I was looking for. Net Services gets a division (all the directory based products). One Net, building out from LANs in the enterprise (Netware, Groupwise, Zen Brodermanager etc.) gets a division. And Drew's IOS gets a division called net content. I expected these three. They are right on target. They will focus the company squarely on its mission in each area with the best people for each task. The Fourth division is for customer support services and training which is an elevation of both a female employee of Novell and the entire status of "community" as has been propounded here my many people involved in training and education programs such as Peter Strifas and his CNI colleagues. Drews division is going to be headed up by the former CEO of Just-On, an internet entrepreneur with no previous association with Novell. He will work closely with Drew. Even though ICS revenues were flat for the quarter you are now looking at new blood coming into the most undeveloped (from a commercialized product point of view) but most visionary area of the company, and with a real motive to make the IOS vision work, explosive things can happen here. This is a breakthrough quarter for the company in terms of organization. The divisions are very natural ones. They now have the structure to make things happen. And for the first time I found listening to Nelson through his optimism about net services a rewarding experience. That is because everyone can now work for what they want to happen at Novell without being at cross-purposes with anyone else. IT doesn't have to be one product at the expense of another any more. Everyone and the company as a whole can move forward with this new structure to build a profitable future.