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Technology Stocks : COMS & the Ghost of USRX w/ other STUFF -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Vol who wrote (9077)	11/12/1997 3:21:00 PM
From: Scrapps	Respond to of 22053

>>>When do you think we will see that number again, 1999?>>> Depends on the next earnings report, AND this dang Hong Kong flu.

To: Vol who wrote (9077)	11/12/1997 3:52:00 PM
From: Dee Jay	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 22053

uncertainties and the seeming inability to forecast business trends are among the big reasons Ascend was smashed hard recently. Now it appears that COMS has the same set of problems - not that I'd wish them on anyone. These quotes from the Fool story should not be trivialized by anyone who regards himself as a realist: "A mention by the San Francisco Chronicle's Herb Greenberg and a scathing piece by Floyd Norris in the New York Times alleged that 3Com was using accounting legerdemain to its maximum effect as a tool to hide the fact that U.S. Robotics modems were not selling very well. 3Com has been struggling to get an estimate of how much inventory is in the sales channel, but Chief Executive Eric Benhamou stated at a recent gathering of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers that 3Com will have an accurate measurement of U.S. Robotics inventory levels in January of 1998. (DJ comment: 2 months from now? After Christmas sales?) That 3Com does not currently have solid estimates for channel inventory has forced the company to let charges that wholesaler inventories are "higher-than-optimal" and "demand appears weaker than previously anticipated" stand unchallenged... The Asian worries are even more difficult for the company to refute because the real damage to Asian economies over the past few weeks will only be known in a few months -- right now everyone is simply guessing. At roughly $33 per share, 3Com trades at 16 times reduced fiscal 1998 earnings estimates. Should 3Com trade at 16 times trailing earnings in two quarters, it will touch lows seen only three times in the past seven years -- in late 1990, September 1993, and May 1997. Annualized returns from each of these low points were 52%, 56%, and 24%, respectively...." The latter sentence suggests nice profit opportunities will exist at some point but the storm willhave to be ridden out for a while. Dee Jay