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Technology Stocks : BORL: Time to BUY! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Shroder Wertheim (Hijacked) who wrote (9179)	2/22/1998 5:53:00 PM
From: David Miller	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10836

the reality for Borland is "been there, done that" Lets have a closer look. >>Del has been in Borland for more than one year Del has shown his financial management talents to great effect over the last year, and has made one acquisition that has a long-term feel to it. So far, so good. But his background is hardware, not software, and there's still a great deal of "legacy management" that would be taking up his time, as well as coping with the acquisition. Even (especially?) he will tell you that the job's only half done. >>A year ago, I doubt Borland's enterprise sale is at $8M per quarter. Last reported quarter enterprise sale - $24M Interesting comparison. An informal estimate ("I doubt") versus an official estimate. Since much of the definition of an "enterprise sale" would be subjective, it's a little dangerous to draw too many conclusions from these "statistics". >>VSGN does not have big revenue today, but VSGN has more than 100 enterprise accouts which opens the doors for Borland's enterprise tools. This illustrates the nub of the issue. If VSGN has been unable to make money from "more than 100 enterprise accounts" (where does this number come from, by the way?), why is it axiomatic that the synergy with Borland will create the multiplier? It would be nice if it did, of course, but it is far from being a given. The IDE market is becoming very crowded, with big guns (Oracle, Sybase etc.) and wannabes (Forte, Progress, Unify) all fighting for a piece. Most of these cut their teeth on enterprise business. Coming at it from the desktop end can warp your perspective. Look at Microsoft. >>Borland could easily has market cap of $2B You're just inventing numbers again. Of course it is possible. Likelihood is a different matter. >>Novell must think the same way to BEAS when it dropped BEAS for almost nothing: "a new strategy and a bunch of people who haven't been there before either". I think Novell did the right thing, to hand over a piece of non-core software for $77m in cash (almost nothing?). Bill, Eddie and Alfred (the B, E and A) have an excellent enterprise and software pedigree - check out he BEA home page for details. As well as the $77m over three years for Tuxedo, there was another $22m for DEC MessageQ and Object Broker, which gives them a pretty solid base in the technology. They have only ever operated in the enterprise arena, nowhere else. And their last quarter revenues were about the same as Borland's after only a couple of years of operation. That's not to say there isn't risk there either - they also have the problem of market overcrowding. In addition, they still have some bills to pay (in cash) for their acquisitions. But arguably they have had a stronger focus, for longer. >>ASND, PSFT and BEAS are all into unknown territories 3 years ago. ASND are into networks, and have been around since 1989. PSFT is an ERP mega-package supplier that started in 1987. I would hardly categorise those as unknown territory. You may well turn out to be right, and I may well end up with an empty bank balance and egg on my face. But in the meantime, I will stick with facts as much as possible. david