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Technology Stocks : Citrix Systems (CTXS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: eDollar.com who wrote (8245)	6/10/2000 9:27:00 AM
From: Tom Tallant	Respond to of 9068

From the Miami Herald:Citrix shares take mysterious plunge Theories focus on Microsoft, absent CFO BY JOHN DORSCHNER jdorschner@herald.com In the strange world of high-tech investing, South Florida's software giant, Citrix Systems, has seen its stock price plummet by almost a third in the past two days, and the experts aren't sure why. One theory has it that jittery investors are worried about fallout from the Microsoft antitrust case because Citrix's main product is tied to Windows NT/2000 platforms. The other theory is that the non-appearance of a top Citrix executive at a New York seminar for analysts indicated the Fort Lauderdale firm is in some kind of trouble. Either way, the drop has been precipitous: Before the judge's ruling was announced late Wednesday afternoon, Citrix was trading around $60. Friday, it fell $10.37 to $41.19. For the day, the decline was 20 percent. More than 50 million shares traded hands -- eight times the daily average. ``A lot of people on Wall Street are very near-sighted,'' sighed Michael Cristinziano, an analyst with Gerard Klauer Mattison. He thinks the slide was sparked by the Thursday no-show of John Cunningham, the company's chief financial officer, at the PaineWebber Growth and Technology Conference in New York. Dan Kusnetzky, an IDC vice president who follows software developments, had a different view. ``I could see where investors who don't spend a lot of time studying technology might be worried by the Microsoft case. But they shouldn't be.'' Meanwhile, Citrix was keeping mum. Spokesman Robert Bartolotta said the company never comments on fluctuations of its stock price nor on pending litigation. The company, which is part of Standard & Poor's index of 500 key stocks, has seen plenty of fluctuations. In the past year, it has bounced between $21 and $122. In the March-April downturn, it sank from $100 to $40, then rebounded to $60 before this new fall. Thursday, the Motley Fool Web site mocked nervous investors who dumped a stock because an executive didn't give a speech. Dubbing the trend an ``irrationality mix'' and ``the increasingly popular `missing corporate executive panic,' '' Fool writer Brian Graney shrugged. ``So the guy ditched a stock love fest appearance. Big deal.'' Cristinziano, however, thought Cunningham's no-show might have been significant. ``It has to do with the near-term business trends,'' he said. ``Their last two quarters were in-line. Not that they were shaky, but it wasn't that upside surprise like they've had with their earnings in the past. So now we're getting close to the June quarter.'' Analysts attended the PaineWebber conference hoping to hear hints from Cunningham about how Citrix's earnings were doing. Instead, they heard Vice President Chris Phoenix talk about iBusiness, the unit that focuses on the company's Web strategy. Citrix said Cunningham did not make the trip because of personal reasons, but Cristinziano believed analysts read more into it. ``Myopic Wall Streeters start thinking, `Maybe he just doesn't want to talk to us.' His job is to communicate to Wall Street,'' he said. On Thursday, Dain Rauscher Wessels lowered its recommendation from strong buy to buy. ``My sense is that led to the selloff,'' Cristinziano said. Then there was the Microsoft issue. Citrix's specialty is creating software so that different kinds of programs can deal with each other easily. Its most popular programming operates on a Windows NT or Windows 2000 platform, allowing non-Microsoft programs to work in Windows environments. If Windows' dominance is eroded by the antitrust case, that would seem to mean less need for a Windows interface, said Kusnetzky, but Citrix has been busy developing other interface programs. More importantly, said the IDC expert, Windows platforms still have a lot of life left in them, regardless of the court case. An IDC survey of 1,500 information technology managers earlier this year showed that about half were planning to build their next generation of applications based on Windows. ``Windows NT or Windows 2000 will continue to be the No. 1 product through 2004,'' Kusnetzky said. ``The judge's decision won't have very much effect on that.'' That means, in Kusnetzky's view, that ``Citrix is in a very good position to be successful. The market is growing and they are the leading provider of an important product.'' Despite the two-day slide, Cristinziano also remains upbeat. ``My sense is that the business will be OK in the near-term and do very well in the long term.