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Technology Stocks : TAVA Technologies (TAVA-NASDAQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: dennis reed who wrote (11758)2/19/1998 9:09:00 PM
From: C.K. Houston  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 31646
 
Dennis,

<On page 22 you outline a substantial list of y2k customers and my question is do you have any thoughts re the time frame for these accts. to start adding to sales. In y2k agreements do customers typically "pay-as they go" or are revenues held until all the work is completed or is some other arrangement likely?

Normally I don't discuss financials. BUT ... each of these will start showing up this quarter (ending March 31). But, it's split over the life of the contract. Could go on for 1-2-3+ years Hard to know where the dollars fall, since programs are all different. Great thing here is that while TAVA bills out at a fixed rate for CD ... They don't do "fixed amount" contracts. Engineering hours are billed out as they occur. Onus is on the customer.

When TAVA reports backlog, it's ACTUAL dollars .... not projected or speculative dollars.

I don't pay attention to what goes on "quarter-to-quarter". Some might. I DON'T CARE. Not with how much I know & understand about Y2K, and the concrete deadline.

I'm a "long-term" investor. "Long-term" means different things to different people. MY "long-term" can be 1-2-3+ years. I've researched this thing "inside & out". I don't need to do any more research. Maybe other people do. But, not me.

The key point to remember is that of "any/every company" who has done a "pilot program" with TAVA ... ALL have gone on to a full-blown remediation program. BUT, here again ... we don't know all of the terms of TAVA's involvement. In every instance, they're involved with, and are billing for, managing/training for major programs. Billing rates have gone up 66% this past year ... and will continue to go higher. Let others get their calculators out, and nitpick. Looks good to me. Particularly, in light of such limited competition.

Perhaps someone can post the exact question and answer from the conference call. I LOVED IT! But, I'm too tired to search for it right now.

Check the Research Site for the link for the transcript of the Conference Call. Highlight those elements which are most important to you. A lot was covered.

My research is viewed as extremely tedious, redundant, and sometimes "off topic" to some. It's NEVER been "off topic", but small minded people never understood that.

Whenever I saw something important ... I "cut & paste" ... and put it into Word.

Research isn't hard - it's just VERY tedious. Takes a long time to format properly. But, it my case ... since I have 60-70,000 shares ... it's worth it for ME to take MY time and NOT depend on others.

I've started to trade 10,000 here and there - maybe one day I'll do more. But, I'll ALWAYS have 50,000 as a "core" for my "long-term" position.

The time spent in doing this tedious stuff has been VERY beneficial. While you're formatting, you're FORCED to read!

THAT's how I've been able to see the whole picture. Not many people are willing to take the time. I closed last year UP over 120%. I'm pretty much fully committed on TAVA these days. My average cost is 5.5 ... so, I'm doing pretty good two months into the year.

I'm soon not going to be around to answer questions much longer.

But you're new ... and I appreciated your taking the time to REALLY read my whole report.

Good luck to you,

Cheryl



To: dennis reed who wrote (11758)2/19/1998 10:40:00 PM
From: Richard S. Schoenstadt  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 31646
 
Dennis,

I think you are a little bit high on the future number of employees.
If you read the transcript closely you will see that Tpro is at around
356 employees on Jan. 31.
And that they plan on adding about another hundred by the end of June.
HOWEVER that includes the 43 new employees already added in the last 60 days.
Here is the quote which makes this clear.

"John Jenkins: Yeah, I want to belabor that point one more
time. And I've said this in front of some of you, I'm sure.
We have 10 offices across the US, so for us to hire the 100
people that I'm talking about by end of June, of which we're
arguably half way there already, so it's probably an
undershoot, is not trying to suck up 45 or 50 people out of
one single geographical market. So that's an advantage we
bring to the table certainly."

There is also some further ambiguity.
For example Tpro says they have hired 43 technical people in the last
60 days. If I understood the transcript correctly they also hired some other people.
But Tpro had 330 employees on November 15.
That's 90 days ago and you add 43 to that and you get 373 not 356.
And if you figure a few extra in sales and administration you would expect more.
So it looks like Tpro lost at least 17 employees as well.

Also Tpro in the November cc stated they had about 280 technical people.
But in January after adding 43 people they had only 257 technical people.

I am sure they were just counting people differently.
But I wish they would be a little more careful and consistent in how they count people.

RS