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

To: Joe Antol who wrote (20156)	2/14/1998 10:22:00 PM
From: George Papadopoulos	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Hi Joe, You stated earlier, <but then again, you're probably right. Tolonen will be most likely "creative"<g> I believe you are right without a grin (ok.....here is one now<g>) Why? A few months ago I attended a seminar given by my wife's company. Novell, Sun, and Lotus were there too. I attended only Novell's offerings. Border Manager was very interesting. The two presenters were very professional and the audience (small but probably due to the weather that night) seemed extremely interested. Anyway at the Q&A session, I asked them something like this "Well, this sounds like a great product, how sales have been so far, what is in store about marketing it, I haven't seen much at all out there yet". They jumped on me by saying that sales have been going extremely well (State of Michigan, Meijer(great store I do my grocery shopping there<g>, etc.) Nice numbers indeed....About marketing, they said that they just attended a meeting with Slitz and he has some great ideas in store which will be rolling out in 1998...then a lady at the back said "Bordermania".....do you remember that? I sure don't. Anyway on to the main speaker, a Program Marketing Manager of the Internet Certification Education courses of Novell. Great presentation, very helpful...I even thought about signing up for one of them...(but then I came to my senses....can't be an expert on too many things you know<g>). Anyway, I stayed around at the end and I asked her "What contributed to the spike in the Education earnings in the last quarter?". I intentionally used the word "spike" just to see her reaction....She was visibly surprised at such question. She first said "Where did you get that info?" I said it was given in a news release with the quarterly earnings. "What do you mean by spike" she says. "Well, education revenues have been pretty steady for a long time, but in the last quarter there was a considerable jump". Then she shocks me by saying "Oh, I don't read too much of that numbers stuff"!!!!!!!!!!I couldn't believe it...a program marketing manager not reading the ONLY thing that counts, da money...UNLESS she really knows the real numbers<g>. Anyway, she recovered nicely after that (probably after seeing my reaction of "I can't believe I have my money invested with your company and you, the manager, doesn't even know how your products are selling...")by saying "Yes, I have seen a sizeable increase in the NDS for NT course and an Intranet related course". I am still surprised that Tolonen was not a victim of the downsizing earlier...unless he got an ultimatum.....BEAT THE STREET OR BEAT something else....Here is a rookie CEO in his first try...he gets burned not once but twice...time running out....no more chances from now on....and that is why I think Novell will again barely beat estimates again. I did my fair share of auditing in the public accounting. They don't call them "Generally Accepted Accounting Principles" for any other reason. And if you believe these Big "Six" auditors can catch irregularities so easy....I have my doubts about that. Too much competition and underbidding going on PLUS very nice size consulting contracts (and that's where the money is). SEC should step in and break up the accouting/auditing and the consultants. How can you audit someone when you know you are actually losing money on the audit but hoping to get some nice consulting projects down the line? No wonder they get sued so much. Please don't misunderstand me, I am NOT saying fraud here (stuffing the channel is NOT fraud, just a guaranteed delay of the judgement day<g>). Thank God I am not doing any of this work anymore. I never felt I was making a difference doing the number crunching plus I was too much of a nice guy <ggg> At the end of the seminar there was a raffle. I won something, guess what? A copy of the Internet Explorer (with Jumbo pack). Aaargh!!!!!Still collecting dust. I won't put up this piece of crap on my computer, me and Netscape have been getting along just fine, thank you. So, what's my point here? I had a good time at the seminar seeing First Hand the people in two companies I have invested in. IMHO, there is nothing like personal contact. Guess which one I bought a little more stock the next day....hint, it's not Novell! After that I drove home to see my baby. I missed him... George still holding