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Technology Stocks : THQ,Inc. (THQI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dave brown who wrote (3647)	3/1/1998 4:38:00 PM
From: Bleeker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14266

Dave the stock market is not a zero sum game: what's good for EIDSY is not bad for THQI. That's the feeling I get from a lot of the posts on both threads. The fact is that this year EIDSY has performed much better than THQI on a total return basis. This is not a matter of interpretation but fact. 1)I first began to post on the EIDSY thread about six weeks ago at the same time that I began to build a position in it. It was then trading at $12 1/2 and it is currently above $17 1/2. It actually closed at $18 5/8 on Friday. That's a 50% return so far and I believe EIDSY's prospects--on a total return basis--are still stronger than THQI this year (in spite of EIDSY's superior return so far this year, which, by the way, is superior to mine.) I've never recommended EIDSY as a short-term earnings play. As far as EIDSY's portfolio of games this year: yes, I think it's superior to THQI's, which has an excellent line up. WCW and Nitro were indeed the third and fifth best selling video game rentals in the U.S. last week. But the European Union is not exactly a Lilliputian market: with the 11 members combined, it's actually bigger than the U.S. My point is that EIDSY currently has 3 games (Championship Manager, Fighting Force and Tomb Raider 2) which are ranked #1-#3 in the U.K., France and Germany. TR2 is also a top selling game in the U.S. along with FFVII for game platforms (it's sold 5 million copies world wide) and the PC version hasn't even been released yet. In light of its string of earnings releases, THQI has proved to be a stellar performer, you said. It doesn't take a neurosurgeon or a historian to figure the past. So what else is new. On the issue of my warning a pull back, I filed my post before the market opened Friday. Have you followed the market action in THQI in the last two trading days? It's down almost 20% from its high. EIDSY too is exposed to a similar short-term drop. Both companies have just completed their strongest Christmas quarter. Both have doubled their earnings above analyst estimates. And while expectations are high for both companies, the earnings hurdles are tougher for THQI this year. The difference: EIDSY has a much better 12-month portfolio of games than THQI. Check out Daikatana in the March issue of WIRED. 2)This is a market fraught with risks. And I can be wrong with my recommendations. BDE so far has been one of my bad picks in 1998. It is down 30% from $4 5/8 when I first recommended it. But this is a volatile stock with a high this year of $6 3/8 and I am firm in my conviction that BDE has the potential to be a winner. Still, BDE is a speculative company with an untested concept, so it may turn out that I'm wrong in the long term. I have bought in the low $3s. 3)I'm sorry you lost a lot of money in AXC last year. Since I recommended AXC for the first time in late December on the THQI thread at $2 3/8, it has moved to $3 1/8. On Friday it closed at $2 11/16. That's a gain of 13% from Friday's close and a gain of 34% firm its high several weeks ago. I have dropped AXC from my recommended list. I closed my position at $3 last month after the company decided to issue more debt. Gain: 26% in two months. 4)THQI has done very well this year too, although not as well as EIDSY. You follow this one closely, so I'll let you do the math. I'm going out to get some dim sum: Bleeker