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Technology Stocks : Safeguard Scientifics SFE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bob Kim who wrote (4248)	8/26/2000 7:34:28 AM
From: Timothy R. West	Respond to of 4467

Has anyone done a valuation of the public holdings of SFE? Is there a site dedicated to that somewhere? I used to post the valuation calculations that I made to this board in 1997 and 1998 but then stopped when the comparison got out of hand. I just made a quick calculation using the market values of their holdings at 12/31/99 from their 10K and calculated how many shares they owned based on the 12/31/99 closing prices of all the holdings. I could then figure at 12/31/99 that using fully diluted shares outstanding that the public holdings represented $64.64 and the rest of SFE's $163 stock price represented what people were willing to pay for everything else that SFE owned. So, essentially you have SFE owning Tellabs (which they have contract sold to settle in 2002 - I have to research what that is worth) and private equity funds and direct investments in private equities (which everyone talks about - the incubating companies). Isn't it amazing that at 12/31/99 the value of all 110.9 million shares of SFE at $163 put the company worth $18 Billion, 7.1 Billion of which was the public holdings and the balance of nearly 11 BILLION was what people felt the private portfolio was worth (also I need to include the value of their other investments which do have a liquidating value). At 12/31/99, Internet Capital Group was worth a tidy 6.1 Billion, so if SFE could pull another two of those rabbits out of their hat, then you'd have a chance to make some money by owning SFE. I'd like to post a spreadsheet showing the calculations for anyone to pick apart. Again, the value of holdings came from the 10K for YE99. It is easy to get the 12/31/99 closing price for each stock at yahoo finance or here at silicon investor. The rest is more due diligence. I also noticed that they have written off 40+ million (or approximately 10% of their carrying value) of investments in private companies each of the last 2 years. Feel free to check my old postings at the very beginning of the SFE thread. Tim West