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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kash johal who wrote (126791)	10/24/2000 10:18:30 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1577079

Kash While CPQ's earnings report was a good one, their forward guidance was uninspiring. Do you think they are being conservative, or realistic? I don't know CPQ at all. ____________________________________________________________ Compaq Clears Expectations, but Cuts Fourth-Quarter Guidance By Thomas Lepri Staff Reporter 10/24/00 7:27 PM ET Updated from 5:41 p.m. ET Compaq (CPQ:NYSE - news) reported third-quarter sales and earnings above Wall Street's expectations Tuesday after the close of regular trading. But fallout from the euro's tumble forced the company to lower its earnings estimates for the fourth quarter. Excluding the $25 million Compaq made by selling some of its Internet investments, the company earned 30 cents a share in the most-recent quarter. Analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial were expecting the company would earn 29 cents a share. Including the gain, the PC maker earned $550 million, up from the prior year's $140 million. Revenue looked strong, coming in at $11.2 billion. That figure is up from the year-ago's $9.2 billion and about $450 million higher than the First Call consensus. After-hours trading showed investors reacting cautiously to the latest chapter in Compaq's long turnaround story. After closing the regular session at $27, the stock had last traded at $26 on Island. Compaq's bottom line was helped by cost cutting that reduced operating expenses to $1.9 billion, $132 million lower than the year-ago quarter. The gross profit margin grew to 23.9% from the second quarter's 23.6% and the prior year's 23.2%. Meanwhile, Compaq did well in the two important areas of servers and storage. Sales of Intel-based servers running the Windows NT operating system rose 41% to $1.6 billion. And revenue in the company's storage division, flat in the second quarter, managed to rise 9%. "Looking forward, we expect continued strong revenue growth," CEO Michael Capellas said in a statement. "We are confident that we can achieve 18% revenue growth and strong earnings per share improvement in the fourth quarter." That would put the company's fourth-quarter sales at about $12.4 billion and give Compaq revenue growth of nearly 20% for the second half of 2000. Back in July, Capellas told analysts to expect "strong, double-digit revenue growth" in the second half of the year. So, then, a blowout? Not exactly. The company conceded that 2000 revenue from its Wildfire Unix servers was on course to total $800 million, below its earlier estimate of $1 billion. And though the $133 million that Compaq's consumer PC business earned was an improvement from the prior quarter's $63 million and last year's loss of $169 million, it's still a fairly meager profit. Likewise, few investors are likely to get very excited about the 12% to 14% sales growth the company forecast for 2001 And then there's that darn euro. The company said its attempts to hedge itself against the fluctuations of the European currency had forced it to cut its fourth-quarter pretax earnings by $100 million. According to David Bailey, an analyst a Gerard Klauer Mattison, assuming a 32% tax rate and taking into account the continuing reduction of shares through buybacks, Compaq has essentially taken close to 4 cents off its per-share earnings guidance for the fourth quarter. Prior to the conference call, the First Call consensus for that period stood at 41 cents per share. "They continue to show solid progress," said Bailey, whose firm hasn't done underwriting for Compaq. "But there are still several areas where they need to improve their performance. The revenue numbers are better; the EPS is good in a difficult environment where a lot of competitors are having trouble. But targeting 12% to 14% revenue growth next year -- that's moderate growth."

To: kash johal who wrote (126791)	10/25/2000 3:39:07 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577079

Actually where the line is drawn is when folks want to force their convictions on other people. Kash, In general I think that is a good line to draw but I would not make it universal. I see abortion as a human rights issue. If my conviction is merely that something is wrong I would think it unacceptable for me to force this conviction on others. (By force in this case I mean either law, or non-government physical force, not trying to argue some one out of something I think is wrong, or protesting against there actions). As far as birth control. I do not support making it illegal. The main argument against seems to be that it is "unnatural" or immoral. Even if one accepted this as true. (and I am only making this assumption for the basis of argument not because it is something I actually believe), it still would not amount to either a violation of some one's rights, or an activity that is so dangerous that it has to be prohibited or heavily regulated. As it is a matter of purely personal morality I would be strongly against any attempt to ban contraceptives. I also think drugs and prostitution should probably be legal. As for the death penalty I have gone back and forth on it, and I seem to have settled on a sort of permanent undecided position. The distinction I find between abortion and the death penalty is that the death penalty kills a guilty party as punishment for a crime, while abortion takes an innocent life. If I could be 100% sure that no one would be wrongly executed I might shift my position to become a supporter of the death penalty but I think such certainty is impossible. Tim