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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MR. PANAMA (I am a PLAYER) who wrote (22946)	11/24/1997 6:59:00 PM
From: D. Swiss	Respond to of 176387

another god one; ROUND ROCK, Texas, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Asia's financial crisis has helped, not hurt Dell Computer Corp because currency devaluations there have cut prices for computer components, Dell founder and chief executive Michael Dell said on Monday. Dell said the Asia-Pacific region accounts for only six percent of the firm's revenues, but that 70 percent of the raw materials used by Dell are bought there. He told Reuters in a telephone interview that there had been "some changing behavior" on the part of buyers in the region, but the overall effect of the crisis was minor. "(The crisis) probably has a minor effect in either direction. If I had to peg it one way or the other, I'd say it's slightly positive because of the declining material costs," Dell said. Technology stocks have been hit recently by fears Asia's economic woes would hurt PC demand. "While I can understand how the devaluation of currencies might make products like ours more expensive...they also make things we buy in that region less expensive," he said. "We purchase about 70 percent of our raw materials in the countries where the currencies have come down quite a bit, so the labor cost has come down considerably on those products, which is a gain, a benefit to the company," Dell said. Dell said the computer firm typically has passed cost savings on to the consumer to get a bigger bite of the market, although he pointed out that overall margins did increase from 22.2 percent in the second quarter to 22.5 percent in the third quarter, which ended November 2. Earnings in the quarter were $248 millon, or $0.69 a share, on revenues of $3.2 billion. Dell did not expect a big dip sales in Asia, where revenues were up 52 percent from the third quarter of last year, because the region would have to continue to invest in technology to keep from falling further behind other areas economically. Overall, Dell expected the PC industry to grow at 15 to 20 percent annually for the next few years. "And Dell has the opportunity to grow several times faster than the market," he said. Dell said industry growth would continue to be driven by technological innovation such as faster microprocessors. There was no indication that the PC industry was entering a price war. "A price war is when prices go down faster than costs, which means margins are going down. Our margins went up (in the third quarter), so no price war," Dell said. REUTERS 18:36 11-24-97 :o) Drew