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Technology Stocks : Aspect Telecommunications (ASPT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KHS who wrote (1832)	7/10/2000 5:42:18 PM
From: Bob Trocchi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2018

KHS... I listened to the conference call and below are my impressions. 1. This is the first time I have heard Beatrice speak and she comes across with a lot of confidence. She did not seem to duck any questions. Bottom line and for the long term for me, I was impressed. 2. Beatrice indicated as the PR stated that the problem was in her Central Region and it had a significant shortfall in Bookings and Revenue. She did not reveal how great the short fall was nor did she reveal what % of the business resides in the Central Region but it must be significant. The Sales manager was fired and she indicated that others may go as well and that it would take Q3 to rebuild the region. As such, the full year's business has a bigger jump in q4. This is an area that has me concerned. First of all, I am not sure how long it takes to claim revenue for a sale after it is booked. Since it is becoming mostly a SW business, then bookings and shipments (i.e. revenue) can occur quite closely if managed correctly. I will assume then this is the case. On the other hand, I am concerned that the measurement and management of sales forecasts needs some improvement. She stated that the company did not know of the problem until the end of the Q. My take on this is that headquarters kept calling day by day to see if results were coming in and were told "Sure." Sales management needs to put in controls to insure this does not happen again. Beatrice did indicate that she did not expect it to happen again. Sounded to me like she meant it. 3. I did not write down her rev. projections for Q3/4 but I believe they were around $140M for Q3 and $160M for q4. I will let others figure out how that will translates to earnings. 4. She did indicate that she has instituted tightening of expenses mostly in the area of travel. 5. She indicated that their shortfall was NOT an industry slowdown, rather a sales issue. She further indicated that sales were not lost in the Central Region, rather they were promised by sales and they did not come through. We will need to wait for further information on this one. 6. The analysts that questioned her all focused their questions on the Central Region and in many ways were quite similar. Her answers were quite similar. "We had a sales management problem, we have addressed it, it will take a Q to get the region on track, the sector business and Aspects products are strong, etc. All in all a worthwhile expenditure of time for me and although I am really disappointed, I plan to go along for the ride longer. It will be interesting to see what the analysts do with their comments. My guess is that there will be a stock price pull back to the mid 30's and then based on results in Q3/4 it will either go up or down. cheers Bob T.