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Strategies & Market Trends : Strictly: Drilling II -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: isopatch who wrote (17150)	8/8/2002 6:36:41 PM
From: Jon Cave	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 36161

re: VTSS If my memory is correct, VTSS built a second manufacturing plant at the exact wrong time right before the tech bust and had to borrow a lot of money and is in debt now. This company is not in the same position that it was during the last tech boom. They are in for a fight for there life. They had to cut way back on research and development. If you want to play the networking semi business, then AMCC is a far better bet than VTSS. They have about 1 billion in cash and no debt and a market cap of about 1.4 billion. But remember, CSCO and other companies that use the semi chips are the ones benefiting from the glut in semi chips. If VTSS survives then at $1.70 it will be a good investment but its just too early to tell when the telcom/networking market will recover in time for VTSS to survive. Good luck !

To: isopatch who wrote (17150)	8/13/2002 2:13:29 PM
From: t4texas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36161

yes, traded in and out of nr, and bought more thursday at $3.90 instead of earning the expected $0.02 or $0.03 nr broke even this past quarter. it looked like to me the ceo was counting on shipping that new piece of business (that mat order to the army (about $10M i think)) this past quarter, but it got hung up in signature at the pentagon (so said the ceo on the conf call). i guess some fund didn't like the miss or some small cap funds got some redemptions lately or some fund feels the oil/ng drilling biz is going away forever. it looked like the news must have leaked out somewhere, because the stock started tanking way before the earnings info release. wonder of wonders. i try to monitor this little company, because each quarter they keep doing better and better in the drilling fluids part of the business. even this past quarter as all drilling in the patch was going lower, nr's drilling fluids biz revenues increased by about 15%. more interesting to me was that for every drilling rig serviced by nr the revenue increased about 40% per rig ( about $1.4M/rig versus $1.0M/rig previously). everyone knows wells are getting drilled deeper and deeper, nr appears to have a solution with the deepdrill brand. some independents have used deepdrill with success, and i understand some major international oil companies may be using it too. looks like the mat biz will have to wait for drilling to pick up again before revenues can go up there. somehow it seems nr should get more drilling waste disposal revenue, because of the new epa rules that are now fully in effect in august (now). the businesses nr has appear to be in the best shape they have ever been at a drilling downturn, and the revenue/earnings potential could not look better when/if a drilling cycle starts again. since nr does not have (as far as i can tell) any pressing financial issues, the selling in nr looks kind of over done. i bought some at 3.90, and if it starts moving up i will buy more.