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Strategies & Market Trends : Ask DrBob -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longdong_63 who wrote (41063)	7/22/2001 11:58:00 PM
From: bcrafty	Respond to of 100058

longdong - Thanks. I had heard about regulation FD but in their CCs those mentioned companies said even less than others. Here's where I read about the "no guidance" aspect of my post, from thestreet.com on July 20 by Adam Lashinsky: "Goodbye guidance. There was a time when companies just commented quietly to analysts on Wall Street's expectations for their financial results. Then, after passage of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, a few bold companies, notably Intel (INTC:Nasdaq - news - commentary), began publishing their so-called guidance in their quarterly earnings announcements. Now, after Regulation FD, all companies simply say what they expect on a conference call and leave it at that. But a new trend is developing: No guidance at all. San Jose, Calif.-based communications chipmaker PMC-Sierra (PMCS:Nasdaq - news - commentary) began to set the tone earlier this year when it repeatedly whined that it had "no visibility" on its performance for the rest of the year. Then Corning (GLW:NYSE - news - commentary), by meaninglessly saying it expected a recovery within 12 to 18 months, essentially turned off the guidance spigot. And this week, companies like Sun Microsystems (EMC:NYSE - news - commentary), EMC (EMC:NYSE - news - commentary) and Nortel Networks (NT:NYSE - news - commentary) took things a step further by saying absolutely nothing about the future. Sun, for example, said it won't talk about expectations until its midquarter update in August. Outgoing Nortel CEO John Roth said in a statement Thursday: "We do not expect meaningful growth in spending to occur before the second half of 2002. As a result, our visibility continues to be limited for the near term and we will not provide guidance for the third quarter or full-year 2001 at this time." This is good development. Detailed guidance from companies made professional investors lazy. Everyone had the same guidance, and so everyone was completely shocked when the guidance changed. Now analysts who model well because they make the correct assumptions will have an edge over those who assume badly."