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Technology Stocks : JDS Uniphase (JDSU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (21463)	8/29/2001 3:14:43 PM
From: BWAC	Respond to of 24042

<The 0.2 P/B value happened when the stock had crashed, but before they wrote off all the goodwill. It makes things confusing, because they backdated the writeoff of all their Book Value. Anyway, my point was simply that Book Value (and ratios derived from it) is a malleable number, easy for the accountants to play games with, and therefore not very useful for investors (especially in tech companies).> Would you care to comment on the Balance Sheet, Goodwill excluded that I posted to you? Price to Tangible Book is under 2 right now. If you are going to use Price/Book then I think it would be wise to back out all the Goodwill. The .2 number is really as you say meaningless. Maybe if anybody cares, I could go back and find the historical price to tangible book.

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (21463)	8/29/2001 3:54:35 PM
From: Kent Rattey	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24042

There's no doubt, that without forward guidance from management, valuation is a shot in the dark. The old dogs I talk to, tell me not to place much credence on any valuation ratios when the bottom has fallen out of the market like it has. I suppose you could make the point that the hyper-growth and bubble valuation could be as extreme as the crash valuation with zero product demand and 30% Q to Q sales declines. I'm pretty comfortable here, and if it's cut in half, I'll gladly double down. WB always said he liked when his stocks went down so he could buy more. If I were older, and wasn't looking 20 years down the road, it would be a different story.

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (21463)	8/29/2001 4:43:42 PM
From: Cary Salsberg	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24042

RE: " Anyway, my point was simply that Book Value (and ratios derived from it) is a malleable number, easy for the accountants to play games with, and therefore not very useful for investors (especially in tech companies)." I strongly disagree. What you say may be true if you pick up the Book Value number from an investment service, but it is silly to use Book Value without examining the Balance Sheet. There are things that may be hidden in Balance Sheets, but they are restricted to a few line items. Since most tech companies don't pay dividends, the Balance Sheet represents the cumulative effect of all their years in business. The Book Value is the net per share measure of all of this. A clean healthy Balance Sheet doesn't assure stock price appreciation, but it makes it likely that the company will be around when good times come