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To: Knighty Tin who wrote (178141)	7/8/2002 4:43:41 PM
From: reaper	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 436258

dood, since there isn't a <g> in that post i assume it was not in jest. you sound like the apologists for Tyco (there's nothing wrong there; there's $2 billion in free cash flow; its just evil short sellers and journalists trying to cause trouble hurting the stock). [btw, i know how much you don't care for TYC and am NOT trying to say that you are an apologist for those guys, just that you sound like one in your description of Merck]. grossing up revenue is aggressive. it was aggressive at Priceline and at ValueAmerica and at Ventro and it is at Merck/Medco. the financials do in fact look clean to me, from the standpoint of cash generation, so it is likely this is much ado about nothing. but they do spend an aweful lot on capex (do you know what MRK spends $2.5-$2.7 billion a year on on capex?; why do they spend so much more than PFE while generating similar cash from ops?) which makes FREE cash generation not so hot, and cash flow looks like it is FALLING for the intermediate term as drugs come off patent. i'm not saying there's anything wrong at MRK, as i admittedly don't see anything. but where there's smoke i've found that there's usually more than an agressive WSJ reporter lurking... Cheers