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Technology Stocks : HWP -- Hewlett Packard -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kirk © who wrote (4429)	3/22/2002 9:21:20 AM
From: Jerome	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4722

>>>Don't you think CPQ shareholders will unload <<< Not at all. We feel that CPQ will influence HWP in a very positive way. I would have been happy if the merger failed. Carly gets to fight the media wars, while Mike Capellas gets to run the company. I think that HWP employees will warm up to him immediately. CPQ had a better internet model for selling PC's than did HWP. But the low volumes of PC's sold this year made it a loser. My plan is to acquire as much CPQ with shares and options as far out as possible. If Carley and Mike deliver just 1/2 of what they promised, then HWP get to the $40 to $50 range in two years. Remember when IBM was a $50.00 stock and all those pundits called it the end of big iron and IBM???? If there is a sell off on HWP in the next few weeks I will be buying call options on HWP.

To: Kirk © who wrote (4429)	3/22/2002 9:26:29 AM
From: Jerome	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4722

Kirk...I think you are confusing public opinion with fundamental analysis. No doubt in my mind that public opinion hated this merger. But public opinion never made me a dime. If the elephants did not like this deal they would have squashed it like a flea...:)

To: Kirk © who wrote (4429)	3/22/2002 9:29:33 AM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4722

Kirk, right now, there's a 93 cent spread between CPQ and its exchange value. Any closure of that spread would likely result in selling of CPQ and short covering of HWP, but that very action will tend to keep the spread from narrowing too much and would stem the tide of selling/covering. Once the vote is final, if Carly is right about the outcome, the spread will go away as the closing should happen very quickly. Post-closing, who knows what the CPQ shareholders will do? But since the vote is not final and the outcome is not certain, the spread will probably stay wide for now as this still looks, to me, like a fairly risky arb play. Remember, if the deal does get voted down, there is nothing but its own future to support CPQ, while HWP will shoot upward until most of the 60 million shorts (@3/15) are covered (60 million is more than 6 day's trading). Anyway, for anyone willing to bet that this is a done deal, you can make 9% in a month or less just by buying CPQ and shorting HWP. Do it on borrowed money and your returns are even better - for a professional arb, much better. Pretty rich for this late in a deal (no more gov't hurdles to jump). OTOH, the fact that the spread remains so wide and that there are only 60 million shares of HWP short (out of a billion to be issued in the deal), tells me that few pros are willing to make the bet, no matter how rich it looks. The arb pros, at least, are not so confident as Carly and Jerome that this is a done deal. Could Carly's "guidance" be right for once, and the arbs wrong? Bob

To: Kirk © who wrote (4429)	3/22/2002 9:31:38 AM
From: Jerome	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4722

Kirk...try looking at it this way.... What stocks in your portfolio have the potential to double in the next two or three years? My list is short...HWP, AMAT, NVLS, ORCL, KLIC, ATML.... Lots of tech stocks will go up...but its the two and three baggers that save a portfolio.

To: Kirk © who wrote (4429)	3/23/2002 9:20:56 AM
From: Lynn	Respond to of 4722

Dear Kirk: Get our premium??? Maybe those shareholders who bought when CPQ was down, down, down post-merger announcement, meaning those CPQ 'shareholders' only in CPQ for a trade. For those of us who have been shareholders since long before the merger plans were announced, though, I do not know one person who considers what we are getting a 'premium' to jump up and down in excitement about. Many of these people (but not me) bought their CPQ shares at 30 and above. The biggest selling we might see is from institutions and funds who currently hold shares of both HWP and CPQ and, after a merger, have to sell shares (due to their guidelines, whatever) now that they are overweighed in HWP. For individual CPQ shareholders, heck, there's a real incentive to hold new HWP shares: Our yearly dividend will double!! Lynn