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

To: dwight vickers who wrote (18775)	11/28/1997 3:04:00 PM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Hello dwight, I appreciate your desire for exact, specific comments. I too am often one to be specific. > How much of a discount do employees get in the Novell stock > purchase plan? 15% ... and I believe that you can put aside up to 10% of each check, post tax. > Those aren't insider purchases, they're giveaways. I will agree that they are not "officially"(?) what you would refer to as insider purchases, however they can be bought and sold on the same day and yet people are holding the stock ... including me. (I know ... I'm just naive ...) My main point was the general statement by Salah that "Insiders are selling", which might be a true statement, but I believe it to be misleading ... > Please do not attempt to equate those or stock options (as Schmidt > did on CNBC) with open market insider purchases. They are worlds > apart. My apologies ... I did not attempt to equate these two different situations. I actually went out of my way to describe the transactions in detail so that I did NOT try to imply that these were the same. Again, my apologies is I was not explicit enough. I still feel that "Insiders are selling" is misleading and is not generally representitive of the overall perspective at Novell today. > I wish that people who have no experience with the well known and > institutionally followed theory of "Insider Buying and Selling" > would stop making these comments. They are inane. I like the fact that it is a "theory" ... that means that it is not an absolute. I would suggest that if people have other means, that are a better deal, to purchase stock ... then they will not be buying on the open market. I do however understand the general logic of this theory and understand why, when the purchases occur, it is a good sign. > Sorry, but it's the truth. I believe what you have said. > Read up on the research done by Bob Gabele, David Coleman, and > others who have followed it for decades. Is there a good on-line source for this? I'll look around, but if you know of one I would love to examine their work. > I also am surprised that no one commented on the fact that NOVL > shares outstanding went up by 8 million. Seems excessive no matter > how it's explained away. What would be the possible reasons for this? I know that last quarter they had not set aside enough shares for the stock purchase program and many of us were not able to purchase our full share ... would this be related? > I'm not bearish on NOVL at these levels and tend to agree with BP's > comments, but let's hold the analysis to things that we are > qualified to talk about. I understand, and again apologize if i was not clear enough on how I stated my observations. > Dwight Scott C. Lemon

To: dwight vickers who wrote (18775)	11/28/1997 5:25:00 PM
From: Don Earl	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

Hi Dwight, There was a S8 filed Oct 22 to issue an additional 4,000,000 shares for the employees stock program. Your guess is as good as mine where the extra 4,000,000 came from. Following the discussion on insider activity, I'm not sure if Scott understood the difference between Presidents, Vice Presidents, Directors, Financial Officers, etc. that are in a position to have very confidential information that would be a clear trading advantage over the average employee. To my knowledge employees don't have to file and their trades are not reported. Yes? Last spring I was looking through insider trades at insidertrader.com and noticed that almost every officer in FLEXF had loaded up at around 24. It was trading around 18 at the time, a few weeks after the reports were filed. I was burried in NOVL with losses I couldn't afford to walk away from but I have tracked the stock since then. It's currently trading in the mid 40s and I seem to recall it breaking 50 a few times. Just an example for those who do not believe that a lot of insider buying is a sign of good things to come. I don't believe it's the only thing a person should look at but it is certainly a factor. IMO this quarter was a book keeping surprise not an earnings surprise. I suspect the Chief Financial Officer felt the same way when he sold 10K shares at the end of October rather than waiting three weeks for the numbers to be released. Regards, Don