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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rich Young who wrote (18661)	11/25/1997 9:57:00 AM
From: Ben Antanaitis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Isn't that what MSFT does with it's WinDoze95 revenues? I believe they have 'deferred' them so they can 'spread the revenues out over time'. Whether you spread revenues over a long time, years, or a short time, next quarter, isn't it the same?

To: Rich Young who wrote (18661)	11/25/1997 10:10:00 AM
From: BP Ritchie	Respond to of 42771

Right idea, probably wrong timing though. IMHO I think they did 'squash' any questionable revenue/profit numbers a few weeks after Schmidt started ... and have been 'postponing' significant revenue & profit for all of 1997. It is in the current management's best interest to flush out all the bad news and 'set the bar' against which their future performance will be measured as low as possible ... that includes the 1997 YE numbers. I don't think we'll see any 'blow out' numbers until sometime later in 1998 ... and they will probably try to produce several Quarters in a row of good results (using the 'backlog' they've created in 2H97 if needed) to appear more convincing. They sure weren't trying very hard to make sales revenue in 1997, much of the revenue they could have taken in 4Q looks like it was postponed to 1998. They just completed a Sales re-organization the week before COMDEX ... they spent the last few months getting organized and making plans ... not even trying to make sales. Wonder what Schmidt will tell folks to expect now? ... maybe we'll get some preview on CNBC tomorrow? I think their intentions and plans are pretty good, I'm not so happy with their attitude (take the time to get it right?) or sense of urgency ... MSFT isn't going to 'play fair' and will take steps to block Novell's success. MSFT pays a lot of attention to it's competitors and usually competes by 'putting under' their competition in order to lockup market opportunities for itself ... the Networking SW market is now the biggest of all the Software markets, MSFT won't let Novell sell it's products now, but will try to 'freeze the market' until MSFT products can be ready (maybe 2 more years) ... not even the DOJ investigation will distract them enough to let Novell 'execute it's plans' without some attempt to de-rail them ... the best defense for Novell is speed of execution, they have to learn how to move faster than MSFT. It's still not clear to me that they've figured this out.