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Technology Stocks : Network Appliance -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SecularBull who wrote (5677)	12/21/2000 12:31:18 PM
From: Selectric II	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10934

No, but at one time Merrill used me. Never again.

To: SecularBull who wrote (5677)	12/21/2000 12:31:37 PM
From: Dr. Id	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10934

Wednesday December 20 5:50 PM ET Storage Sector Falls on Corporate Spending Fears By Nicole Volpe NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares of the hottest Internet data storage equipment makers fell by 10 percent or more on Wednesday, amid a steep sell-off in technology stocks due to fears that corporate spending on computer systems is poised to cool off. EMC Corp. (NYSE:EMC - news) saw its stock fall to close down $7-3/8 to $55-5/8 in heavy trade on the New York Stock Exchange (news - web sites), near to its year low of $47-1/8. Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (NasdaqNM:BRCD - news) fell $18 to $147-1/4 on the Nasdaq. Network Appliance Corp. (NasdaqNM:NTAP - news) shares closed down $6-3/8 to $53-3/4, well off its year-high of $152-3/4. Analysts said that the storage sector was being dumped by beaten-up technology investors who could no longer stomach owning high-flying stocks, despite positive comments by several Wall Street analysts defending the sector. ``What's going on is anything with a high valuation is getting crushed right now,'' said Wit SoundView analyst Gary Helmig. Trading at 100 times last year's earnings, EMC is now seen by increasingly wary investors as overvalued, even though the explosion of data created by the Internet makes its products some of the hottest in technology. Moreover, Network Appliance trades at 261 times last year's earnings. Brocade trades at 295 times last year's earnings. In a related move, Merrill Lynch analyst Thomas Kraemer shook up technology investors on Wednesday with a downgrade of computer makers International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM - news) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HWP - news). He said a survey of corporate technology buyers found they had scaled back their plans for purchases of information technology. However, the survey found that purchases of networked storage ranks No. 1 among buyers at large traditional U.S. companies, and No. 2 at dot-coms worldwide. Networked storage includes storage area networks (SAN) which are Brocade's specialty, and network attached storage (NAS) which is Network Appliance's bailiwick. EMC is a broad-based supplier of such equipment. ``We expect the storage market to exhibit strong acceleration,'' Kraemer wrote in a note to clients. ``E-Commerce and related applications sit at the top of spending intentions. These all require large amounts of storage, usually significantly more than companies envision.'' Ironically, EMC and the other storage players fell harder than Hewlett-Packard and IBM did on Wednesday, even though Kraemer downgraded Hewlett and IBM and sung the praises of storage as companies invest less in computer power and more in safeguarding their data. ``Both this and many other surveys we have seen strongly suggest that IT storage spending should begin to outpace servers,'' Kraemer wrote in a note to clients. ``As this shift occurs, we believe EMC should gobble up IT dollars and climb up the ranks.''