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Technology Stocks : PALM - The rebirth of Palm Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win-Lose-Draw who wrote (4302)	3/19/2001 1:45:01 PM
From: arun gera	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6784

>>if it is expected that PALM is the next MSFT+CSCO+whoever (as some have claimed) then it is about time PALM started making those types of profits...>> Palm's marketing head Satjiv Chahil is formerly from Apple. Apple has these fantastic looking products, but the company is not as bottom-line conscious as Microsoft. Hope that Palm is more conscious of its bottom-line. Unfortunately, nothing suggests that Palm is that bottom-line driven. Formerly a part of 3Com and US Robotics, Palm managers have not really been part of a company with great financial discipline. The day Microsoft gets 35 percent market share on the PDA OS, it will be time to give up on Palm. Arun

To: Win-Lose-Draw who wrote (4302)	3/19/2001 3:23:20 PM
From: lkj	Respond to of 6784

Except that MSFT was, as I recall, highly profitable even in the midst of its titanic struggle against the then-mighty Big Blue Was IBM really considered "mighty" when OS2 was competing against Windows and NT? I think it was just the opposite of mighty. It was considered slow, old, fragile, and badly managed. Microsoft was not, and still is not. Therefore, it's a lot more difficult for Palm to compete against the mighty Microsoft today than it was for the mighty Microsoft to compete against the fragile IBM 10 years ago. None the less, Palm has been kicking Microsoft's butt and the weight scale is shifting to Palm's side ever so slightly. Khan

To: Win-Lose-Draw who wrote (4302)	3/19/2001 4:44:26 PM
From: Tom R. Clarksburg	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6784

Winlosedraw: Microsoft had very little profitability even when it first went PUBLIC in its FORTRAN to Windows era. As I recall, most of my analyst and broker colleagues had similar concerns over MSFT "skyhigh" P/E when it first went public in March 1986. If I recall correctly it went public at an IPO price of $21/share and traded as high as $ 28 the first day of trading. During the period 1986 to 1990, they grew revenues nicely but only managed to eek a miniscule $.01 to $.04 /share profit evey year, even though its stock price rose to about $80/share during that period of time. You must understand that all new company's just don't come out the shoots with huge profits, HIGH R&D expenses at the beginnig prevent profits from soaring.....that is the case with PALM today. But the market pays for future profits and discounts then vigorously in the case of PALM and in the early case of MSFT. Therefore, your statement: Except that MSFT was, as I recall, highly profitable even in the midst of its titanic struggle against the then-mighty Big Blue... is factually UNTRUE While, yes they were more profitable than PALM, however, you can't compare software to hardware. Palm is vitually a hardware company now, therefore profitability will obviously not be as high as a pure software company such as MSFT. But as PALM evolves its software and OS business....that when I think we will see the margins expand. see below (with those EPS, MSFT P/E ratios were statospheric at the beginning), Yet they gradually "grew into" that 1,000+ P/E they had in their early post - IPO years: microsoft.com