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

To: Petz who wrote (2083)	1/8/1998 4:19:00 PM
From: Yin Shih	Respond to of 3506

<<I, too, was involved in a parallel processing startup called Oryx from '86 to '91, when it folded. I worked on computer architecture and parallel-izing of algorithms.>> I was given the chance to start a hypercube parallel processor subsidiary of Ametek, from 1983 to 1991, which was later spun off as Symult Systems Corp. We were head to head with Intel and N-Cube (which later got bought out by Oracle), while also trying to eat some of Cray and Control Data's lunch. What an experience. <<From your original post, it is apparent that Charlie Trimble is both a visionary, and someone who inspires loyalty and confidence in his employees.>> Charlie is an extremely bright and focussed man. It has been mentioned that he is blind. This is true in a legal sense, but not the common sense. He can see to walk around, but he can't read or see details without being closeup and using a monocular. Regardless, he succeeded in a technical career, as an engineering manager, and also sailed as a pasttime with this handicap. So this gives you some measure of him. I've noticed in past posts that some have complained about his heavy investment in R&D at the expense of earnings. Here is my interpretation of his strategy. Charlie believed that GPS would become pervasive very early on - he coined the phrase "next utility" soon after the IPO. The goal of the heavy R&D expense is to ensure that TRMB has a piece of every profitable pie as the application sectors take off. Charlie will not be satisfied with TRMB as the best surveying products company or best GPS avionics company or the best car navigation company. He wants TRMB to be the best GPS company in the broadest sense possible. Consider his background as an HP employee for 15 years, the only place he ever worked before TRMB and where he learned his lessons. HP basically accomplished the same thing as an electronics and computer company - being good across a broad spectrum. The problem with this strategy for short-term stockholders is that pushing R&D to the point of mnimal earnings means that quarterly sales blips can easily take the earnings negative. This is "bad" management if you are focussed on earnings. But it can be "good" management if you are focussed on market share and future growth. A hiccup in this strategy is that GPS market forecasts are growing nicely, but still not as quickly as forecast many years earlier. I think Charlie took a couple of hits early on because of believing those early forecasts. At this point, I suspect he has a little more earnings buffer now so that he doesn't go negative on quarterly reports and that he is patiently sitting on the $90M in cash so that he can finance the growth needed wihen the market reality actually meets the market forecast. The way Charlie manages TRMB is very much for long-term stockholders, of which he is the biggest. Yin