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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony @ Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony, -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sword who wrote (59666)	9/27/2000 9:40:36 PM
From: StockDung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 122087

Fun Facts-->Yahoo has a market value of about $50 billion. That's more than the combined value of General Motors Corp., the world's largest automaker, and retailer Sears, Roebuck & Co

To: Sword who wrote (59666)	9/27/2000 10:18:13 PM
From: FDHIII	Respond to of 122087

Are you short? best ~F

To: Sword who wrote (59666)	9/27/2000 11:00:26 PM
From: xcr600	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 122087

In the past doesn't MSFT typically report towards the end of eps season? I'd be surprised if they are reporting next week already.

To: Sword who wrote (59666)	9/28/2000 8:21:36 AM
From: UnBelievable	Respond to of 122087

The One Time Charge They Are Going To Take Due To FAS Changes Has To Do With Reporting Gains and Losses on Derivatives.

To: Sword who wrote (59666)	9/28/2000 10:48:54 AM
From: Jennifer O	Respond to of 122087

Whoelse knows MSFT's earnings better then themselves? Why would they sell their own stock's puts if the earnings are going to be bad? Don't make sense to me.

To: Sword who wrote (59666)	9/29/2000 3:36:13 PM
From: Paul Berliner	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 122087

Should the Company choose to suddenly reel in the majority of those puts, the stock may rally. FYI, those puts are now ALL deep in the money: sec.gov From their most recent 10-Q, linked above: Note that the puts are not 'naked' in the normal sense. To enhance its stock repurchase program, Microsoft sold put warrants to independent third parties. These put warrants entitle the holders to sell shares of Microsoft common stock to the Company on certain dates at specified prices. On March 31, 2000, 163 million warrants were outstanding with strike prices ranging from $69 to $78 per share. The put warrants expire between June 2000 and December 2002. The outstanding put warrants permit a net-share settlement at the Company's option and do not result in a put warrant liability on the balance sheet.

To: Sword who wrote (59666)	9/29/2000 5:39:33 PM
From: Peter Greenhill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 122087

Have Microsoft issued a profits warning??

To: Sword who wrote (59666)	9/29/2000 9:58:21 PM
From: Leeza Rodriguez	Respond to of 122087

Sword, Thanks very much for your insights into MSFT. Great stuff. A few thoughts regarding valuation and PE/ PSR comparables (especially between MSFT and AAPL) . PSR values -------- (caution: this is back of the napkin style) If sequential revenue growth dries up for MSFT, then the PSR ratio will contract dramatically. However, since MSFT has such phenomenally high operating margins (~47%), they have a high "built in" baseline of "allowed PSR." How much? My Obi-Wan graph says that at a zero sequential rev growth inflection point, MSFT could trade down to PSR= 10 from the current PSR > 14. That would put the stock in the $44 range. AAPL on the other hand, has TTM operating margins of <8%, thus zero sequential growth conditions will result in a much lower allowed PSR multiple (~1 ) in the marketplace. After todays action, I believe AAPL is now trading at a PSR= 2.5. So, the moral of the story is.... Even under zero growth conditions, MSFT will always command a much higher PSR (or PE) in the marketplace than AAPL , not because MSFT is God <g>, but because they have dramatically higher operating margins than AAPL. :-) However, I think you are indeed on to something with your intuitions regarding MSFT. I'd love to think I had the nerve to buy naked out of the money puts. leeza rodriguez

To: Sword who wrote (59666)	10/1/2000 9:57:09 AM
From: SouthFloridaGuy	Respond to of 122087

Excellent post. I agree with your assessment. Loss from venture capital investments could also play a factor in earnings. I believe in past quarters, INTC was counting venture capital gains in their earnings statements, so I would guess the accounting gurus at MSFT, CSCO, etc are/were too. If that was the case, then many more companies could be missing for the next few quarters.

To: Sword who wrote (59666)	10/2/2000 5:25:46 AM
From: Dan Spillane	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 122087

Ummm...Microsoft has a new CFO. Microsoft is also changing the way they do accounting. And they have also just released a slew of new products, including a Oracle-killing database. I suspect you want Microsoft at a nice bottom price. Translation: there is a re-acceleration of growth, and the stock is at multi-year lows. Finally, has anyone else seem the new Microsoft Windows media player? It is quite impressive. Take a look. Re: I suspect that MSFT is carefully crafting a miserable earnings release. For the past 6 years, they have without fail issued their 10-K by this week. Yet they now say that they will announce earnings next week, "...if market conditions allow" (their exact quote on the phone), and their 10-K in October.

To: Sword who wrote (59666)	10/4/2000 1:05:49 PM
From: Paul Berliner	Respond to of 122087

CFRA, the esteemed firm which weeds out companies with aggressive accounting practices and/or deteriorating financial conditions, released a very harsh and eye-opening report today on MSFT, accusing the company of meeting numbers this year by changing prior accounting and amortization policies, as the law of big numbers catches up with the co. The most interesting fact in the report, available on MultexNet, is that the company has been OCF negative the entire year if you reverse a recent reclassification they made whereby Stock Option Tax Benefits, a financing cash flow item, was reclassed into the operating cash flow section. 95% of companies report that line item in FCF. Additionally, back to the subject of the put warrants, CFRA notes the following: Growing Off-Balance Sheet Liability CFRA estimates the current value of the put warrants liability to be a minimum of $2.1 billion (at June 30, 2000: warrants to put 157 million shares at strike prices ranging from $70 to $78 per share). Furthermore, and based on June 2000 information, CFRA estimates that the liability increases by an additional $157 million for each $1 decline in MSFT common stock. The outstanding put warrants expire between September 2000 and December 2002 and permit a net-share settlement at the Company’s option (i.e. MSFT has the option to settle the liabilities with cash or via the issuance of additional shares).