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Technology Stocks : EMC How high can it go? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gus who wrote (12110)	2/11/2001 1:47:34 AM
From: Conan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17183

Another point about the 80% win rate: What if NTAP is right BUT they are losing the 20% that are the biggest deals? I own both stocks. About IDC. I have worked for a company that reported numbers to IDC. I have done due dilligence on companies (from the inside during a potential acquisition) that report numbers to IDC. I have found three common misrepresentations with IDC numbers: 1) Companies over report numbers for products that represent new segments they are entering (they underreport older segments that are not "hot" to compensate). You can be certain that any sub 1% market share number is actually zero. Any number that represents $2M or less is likely to actually be far less. 2) You can see how IDC analysts try to compensate for this by comparing past projections in similar reports from different years. You will find that they often revise previously reported numbers down as they discover the deception practised on them. 3) When one company in an industry is lying to IDC the others frequently are forced to pump up their numbers too. Consider IDC numbers to be like the reported height and weight for football players--At least 10 pounds and 1.5 inches above reality. Conan

To: Gus who wrote (12110)	2/11/2001 6:52:43 AM
From: Educator	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17183

Hi Gus- Excellent post. While I'm not invested in NTAP, I appreciate the comparison, and more importantly, the nice summary of EMC's past performance and future projections. Great job! The 99% customer retention is quite a feat. I remember not long ago when TGT voted EMC its "best" corporate partner of the year. The reliability and wonderful service was very much appreciated by that retail company. Do you also recall Mass. voting EMC, MA's corporation of the "decade" in the 90s? That is another terrific stamp of approval. I was invested in EMC in 1999 for a short time. I grabbed a handsome profit and moved on. I have always had the stock on my radar screen. I decided to jump in this last week sighting weakness and nearing a 52-week low. I have a position in my wife's 401k and now in my trading account. I know what a great company EMC is, and how dominant they are in their field. Do you care to predict the coming week with EMC? Do you see it losing more ground if the techs continue sliding? Analysts have been quiet recently. I would like to see some reiterations of buy or strong buy. Ed

To: Gus who wrote (12110)	2/11/2001 8:21:06 AM
From: 2MAR$	Respond to of 17183

Goldman conference to highlight tech By Mike Tarsala, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 5:00 AM ET Feb 11, 2001 Newswatch Latest Headlines Get Alerted PALM SPRINGS, Calif. (CBS.MW) - Against the backdrop of a new plunge in technology stocks, investors will gather at the annual Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium this week to discuss the outlook for the beleaguered group. The economy is stumbling and some of the best-loved tech stocks are getting whacked again, with a three-day decline in the Nasdaq at the end of last week wiping out all of the index's gains for the year. Junk bonds seem to be out-pacing the growth of tech stocks. Tech trading volume remains low. All the more reason tech investors will want to listen to what some of the companies still standing have to say. Tom Siebel, chief executive and founder of sales software maker Siebel Systems (SEBL: news, msgs) will kick off events Monday in this California desert resort town. He's expected to give his outlook for information technology spending, and perhaps some secrets behind his company's 170 percent earnings growth. Some of the market's most highly valued companies will be represented, including storage expert Veritas Software (VRTS: news, msgs) , middleware software maker BEA Systems (BEAS: news, msgs) and supply chain software maker i2 Technologies (ITWO: news, msgs) . Also speaking from the conference Monday will be Mike Ruettgers, chief executive of storage hardware maker EMC Corp (EMC: news, msgs) . He's expected to talk about his company's sales outlook, and whether EMC, among the fastest-growing stocks in the 1990s, can continue its winning ways in the new decade. Executives from the Nasdaq's most valuable company, Microsoft, also will speak at the conference. Rick Belluzzo, director of business development for company's future .NET strategy, is expected to detail the company's plans. CBS.MarketWatch.com plans three days of coverage from the Goldman conference, in addition to weeklong coverage of from the Robertson Stephens Tech 2001 Conference in San Francisco.

To: Gus who wrote (12110)	2/11/2001 1:20:23 PM
From: pirate_200	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 17183

The accounts receivable/DSO fluctuation occurs depending on geographic makeup of sales - whether it skews to US or outside US and also segment makeup of sales - enterprise or smaller. The thing you neglect to mention is book-to-bill, which they still say is 1 - even in a very tough quarter. If competition were so great, wouldn't you expect to see a major erosion of gross margin - which hasn't occurred? Is there's a receivables problem - wouldn't you expect to see book-to-bill to drop way below one? Also: you completely ignored the quote, from EMC management, that they had the same problem. I'm not parotting anything, I'm presenting a balanced argument, unlike your slanted argument. > For example, there are anecdotal reports that EMC > is pricing the high availability IP4700 at least > 20% under the single-point-of failure F840. > Expect even more aggressive pricing as EMC > catapults its reseller partners off to a good > start. EMC buys more components and can push > more software behind its hardware. It's amazing to me that you are excited about EMC dropping margin on products as the only way to be able to sell them! Another question you neglected to answer: the IP4700 benchmarks with RAID OFF, meaning they are featuring its performance numbers with a single-point-of-failure. Does EMC have a reason for that? Finally, NTAP management made those comments about EMC salespeople in response to an analyst question saying: "EMC says you are road kill, game over." NTAP said, and has always said, when customers compare NTAP's product head-to-head with a Celerra and now IP4700 they almost always win. They encourage head-to-head competition. In fact, they say they win a lot against the Symmetrix. I have NEVER heard EMC management encourage head-to-head tests of their products against NTAP. Have you?