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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JDN who wrote (59186)	3/5/2004 11:41:44 AM
From: Charles Tutt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

"A bunch of Democrats in that rating agency" -- that's pretty funny. I think it's more likely a bunch of Republicans doing voodoo economics along the line of Bush's proposed budget. BTW, I read the Plame investigation has moved to Air Force One -- do you know whether that's true? It sounds like there may be treason pretty close to (at?) the top. JMHO. Charles Tutt (SM)

To: JDN who wrote (59186)	3/5/2004 11:47:43 AM
From: E_K_S	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

Hi JDN - I noticed that their long term debt to total assets is around 11% and falling. Many of their assets are in cash and short term investments too so they are quite liquid. What many technology companies have done with these 40 year low interest rates is refinance their long term debt obligations using new convertible preferred stock issues locking in a low rate for future costs of borrowing. This provides flexibility to management so they can have access to future lines of credit and have a very low fixed cost for money if the business ever requires it. Generally, these issues are paid off before any stock conversion takes place using their current cash flow. Perhaps Sunw needs to look at a complete refinancing of their balance sheet and utilize a few of these convertible preferred new issues that mature 5-7 years out in the future. Get rid of all of their bank debt obligations and credit lines and just finance everything internally. Because they have so much cash in the bank, management might even consider creating a new financing division that utilize their credit lines to offer attractive financing packages for their enterprise customers and service partners. EKS