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Technology Stocks : SYQUEST -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ralph Bergmann who wrote (4915)	12/4/1997 10:19:00 AM
From: Dale Stempson	Respond to of 7685

Well, I like trading Syquest so I bought at the open today and will play the news. I'll be back out before the market closes. Syquest's production numbers appear to be pretty good, however as others pointed out: Can they make any money on the SparQ? As a trader I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. As a long term investor I say: "No way Jose". Regards - Dale

To: Ralph Bergmann who wrote (4915)	12/4/1997 10:24:00 AM
From: Michael Coley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7685

RE: How will SyQuest make money on SparQ? Raising the price on a product is virtually unheard of in this industry. About the _ONLY_ way a company could do that would be through the expiration of a rebate program. For instance, start a product at $249 with a $50 rebate. When the rebate expires, the "price" has gone up. SyQuest didn't do that with SparQ. I doubt that they would ever be able to get more than $199 for it, now that they've introduced it at that price. Potential customers would feel like they were being ripped off at a higher price. I think that they hope to make money on it through cost efficiencies at higher volumes. I have no doubt that SparQ can be produced at a profit, but I do have serious doubts that SyQuest could ever ramp up to the production and sales levels that would make it profitable. And they've already shot themselves in the foot selling the razor blades so cheap. Even if they do return to a slight profit (at Iomega-level volumes or higher), they'll never get Iomega's level of profitability. These are just my opinions. - Michael Coley - i1.net

To: Ralph Bergmann who wrote (4915)	12/4/1997 2:07:00 PM
From: Steven Fischer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7685

I am waiting for it to come north, I will be buying soon as sparq gets here. Even if they up the price a little it is on my shoppers list -Steve

To: Ralph Bergmann who wrote (4915)	12/4/1997 4:53:00 PM
From: Robert E. Bruss	Respond to of 7685

I'm a little fuzzy on the details of this, but if I remember right Iomega was in similarly poor condition when they introduced the Ditto products and started focusing on retail sales. Sure led to a lot of good things for them. Syquest may find itself with some of that same type of success if the Sparq drive works as advertised. Hard to tell where it'll lead, but who'd a thunk the Ditto drives would be so successful and then we'd have the Zip?

To: Ralph Bergmann who wrote (4915)	12/7/1997 5:18:00 PM
From: Fred Mah	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7685

Ralph, "Do you have an idea about the production costs of sparq? What I am asking myself all the time: What is Syquests strategy to increase their profit margins? Let's assume sparq will be a smash hit. But they don't earn money with it. Will they increase the price later, or will they replace the sparq with a newer, higher priced device? Any comments? Ralph" Well, as has been noted, it would be a poor situation if they had to increase the price. I don't actually recall any PC related hardware in which the price increased in time. Thus, they are likely making some profit on the current sales, however, I believe they are currently aiming at market share. Without a reasonable share your product won't grow. This is true of any computer product, and the reason Mac is making little impact on the general computer market. With growing share they can sell more carts and more drives. The only problem is the misalignment of the product lines, Syjet(SCSI/IDE) and SparQ(IDE) are different. Which seems to point to a future product (~3GB perhaps) that will either take both carts or one of them. That's the next question.