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Technology Stocks : Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Night Writer who wrote (68)	5/7/2002 12:46:34 AM
From: Dave B	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 4345

Nightwriter, HWP holders got the shaft buying CPQ. CPQ holders got the shaft being bought by HWP. <G> CPQ holders now think positive about the deal. They think CF & MC can make it work. As I mentioned, they believe it makes CPQ stronger since HWP was a stronger company. HWP holders focus on the HP culture. They fight change. They hate senior management. They don't see positives in the CPQ deal. (Merger, buy out or what ever you want to call it.) They see CPQ weakening HWP and distracting it from profitable businesses. It's not about change. HP changes all the time, and the people change with it. HP creates and enters new businesses continually (in case you didn't see my earlier post, they recently announced entries in the DLP projector market as well as the home audio/video component market). I'm not sure these are great businesses to be in, but at least they try. CPQ, however, is in low-margin hardware businesses, with the exception of Services as far as I can tell (and anyone who thinks that there's any long-term profit in Pocket PC devices, or that CPQ, HPQ, or HWP is going to make any reasonable inroads into the storage market against EMC, NTAP, IBM, etc. is crazy). If I've missed some other profitable business in the CPQ product line-up, please let me know. Why do you own HPQ? Because they changed the symbol today <G>. We used to own HWP. My wife is a buyer-and-holder and since this is the company she works for, we hold the stock (until we need some cash, that is). Until five years ago, HWP was a major portion of our net worth. Now it's a fairly minor portion. Until Carly came on board, it wasn't a horrible investment. HWP has moved in fits and starts for as long as I've been involved with it. They stagnate for a while, then they invent a new business (e.g. plotters, laserjet printers, inkjet printers, etc.) or manage to get a reasonable share of an existing business (e.g. digital cameras, PCs [especially when there was some profit in them]), then they move forward. When all is said and done, I don't really blame Carly for the current stagnation -- I think Lew Platt was the major problem. The company lost a lot of focus under him. But Carly has done nothing to bring focus back to the company, and is even worse than Platt at getting the troops rallied. Maybe Capellas will help; I hope he does. So now, unfortunately, I own HPQ. Since the merger was announced, we haven't sold any under the hope that it would fall through. I will be sitting down with my wife, however, and discussing moving out of the stock on any strength. Now that some of the uncertainty is gone, I expect we'll see a little strength (as witnessed by today's move), but I have no idea how long it will last, nor do I think, barring some major move in the markets, that it will get over $20 anytime soon. FWIW, Dave