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Strategies & Market Trends : The New Economy and its Winners -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (56613)	2/21/2014 7:49:43 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Respond to of 57684

yep I know DATA well. If you like splk then you should be in DATA also. The product is called Tableau, it is a reporting tool for big data. You probably know that standard reporting tools don't work with big data, it is a new format. WDAY, N, CRM have a little more depth though. Once you install WDAY, you are on it for years. Whereas with any reporting tool, the fear of an open source competitor is always right around the corner.

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (56613)	2/22/2014 6:44:25 PM
From: Doren	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 57684

Great companies. I've shied away from them because... how can you rate one competitor against another unless you have an inside view? The field is so complex and changing and opaque to people who don't use or see the software its hard to keep up. I'm not dumb about computers. One of my best friends is a great programmer who goes back to the early days of Norton Software, and I was a recruiter in the data field for some time. Right at the time that corporations were transitioning to client/server Powerbuilder/Oracle. I saw a lot of old tech eat it during that time. Like PANW and FEYE. I was looking into security companies a couple of years ago. No way I could have predicted winners or losers. FTNT - still around haven't had a good two years BCSI - WAN and Internet security disappeared ARST - smart grid security disappeared FIRE - Sourcefire bought by Cisco FTNT - Firewall intrusion monitoring - gone nowhere data FFIV - cloud app efficiency - not much SFSF - cloud execution efficiency ATHN - Cloud medical records - done pretty well

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (56613)	2/24/2014 10:49:37 AM
From: The Ox	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 57684

I find all of the stocks you mentioned interesting but I can't seem to be bullish on them due to their excessive price to sales ratios. Even if they continue to grow at 100% a year, when you pay 40 times sales, you need a minimum of 3 to 5 years before the valuations start to come into line. Most aren't expected to grow revs that fast, more likely in the 50% per year range. For example, we bought SPLK at $31/share but I wouldn't buy it here at $90/share, even with the solid growth they've shown over the past 2 years. Trading at 35 times sales seems a bit excessive, even with their solid gross margins and revenue growth. Similarly, we purchased CRM the last time it fell below $40, but would certainly hesitate to pay $64, even if they are much more in line at 10 times sales. I simply scratch my head at WDAY (p/s 45) and FEYE (p/s 57). Great products, and from what I can see, very solidly run but based on current growth expectations, I just can't pay a 4 year forward valuation for them. DATA (p/s 26) seem much more in line but still pricey.