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Technology Stocks : Osicom(FIBR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grantcw who wrote (5800)	3/7/1998 9:20:00 PM
From: craig crawford	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10479

<< Did you read the first sentence of my post? I too am a little worried about fourth quarter earnings. >> I did, and that's why I reprinted that sentence as well, to be fair. << I also have a lot of recent posts written before earnings were released that show my caution to earnings hitting the mark. I did think revenues were going to be between 32-36 million and they weren't. You do have me there, but if you include the 2 million dollar modified order in there you have 32. >> My point was not to crtitize your predictions. Everyone at one time or another has offered predictions that were off the mark and disappointing, including me. I just want to make it clear that it was disappointing every way you look at it. I was beginning to hear rah-rah things about BFPT deployment etc. All I wanted to show were the expectations of this thread over the last few months and how no one could honestly say that their expectations were met. << There are a lot better shorts out there for you guys to jump on and I'm just very confused about why you're picking on a company that has a Gigamux type product >> If you have a better short I'm all ears. I'm always looking for good short candidates. I don't just pick on companies because I think I can scare a thread into selling a few shares for my profit. I first took a look at Osicom for a long position because they were in the WDM field and that was a sector I was interested in. Only after looking at the situation did I decide that they were a joke. I mean come on, they have been public for 11 years and they still can't earn a consistent profit. Ask yourself how many of the truly great technology companies were public for 11 years and still doing questionable private placements to keep afloat. Cisco? Microsoft? Oracle? Sun? Compaq? Dell? Ciena? FIBR had sales of $115 million for FY1997 and only $119 million for FY1998. That's around 3-4% sales growth. How much did the shares outstanding grow in FY98? 30%? 40%? 80%? (I don't know off the top of my head). I don't expect I will be hearing anyone on this thread saying Osicom is one of the fastest growing companies in California anymore. << Barb, Do you now think that Forresters, SmartMoney, Brooks, Nasa, and the trade journals we read are full of it? It's all a big conspiracy to pump and dump Osicom? >> First of all Forrester is a research firm, no? It's not their job to decide whether or not FIBR is going to be a successful stock or not, they merely compile data about the WDM industry and present all situations for people to explore. If Osicom has a WDM product they are going to mention them right along with all the other companies. All SmartMoney said was that FIBR was a potential competitor to CIEN. What does that prove? Osicom is a competitor to C$CO, A$ND and COMS is it not? Has Osicom turned out to be a threat to any of those companies? I think not. I do find it curious that SmartMoney mentioned FIBR but not ALA, NT, Pirelli, IBM, or any of the Japanese giants. I also find it interesting that FIBR managment made it very clear to everyone in the conference call that they were mentioned in the same breath as Lucent. They were trying pushing a hard sell to the street. As for Brooks, I can't honestly say that they won't purchase Osicom's WDM for deployment in their networks. I can say that I believe FIBR will probably sell it to them at whatever price they have to just to use their name. Remember the long list of well known customers that FIBR has sported in the past. It has done nothing to enhance the value of the company. Why would Brooks be any different than Sun, AT&T, MCI, Adobe or any other well known name that FIBR has sold to in the past? It's not whether or not FIBR has real products that they can sell (I don't deny that), it's a question of whether or not they can be consistently profitable selling those products. (They haven't been for over a decade) As for NASA, it's obvious that FIBR name dropped them. In the conference call it was obvious that FIBR management wasn't expecting much in the way of revenues from them. They made it clear that they were using NASA to gain credible testing of their product. I haven't figured out exactly what NASA gets from FIBR. Maybe they will get some cheap or free Gigamux's. Osicom management did stress that NASA was a customer, just not for the Gigamux. Maybe FIBR gave them a discount on orders for other products in exchange for the tests, who knows. I am confident that any sales that might go to Brooks of the Gigamux will be only to use their name, and FIBR will have to make serious price concessions. That's fine as long as you know that. FIBR is more concerned with associating their name to a big customer, so they can leverage that credibility to higher margin sales. More than likely the higher margin sales will have to come from soemone else besides Brooks. As for the trade journals, all they do is spotlight any company that has a new product out in a burgeoning industry. It is not an endorsement of FIBR. I follow dozens upon dozens of WDM companies and I have seen many of them chronicled in trade rags. How does that equal profitability? Shiva is well known and has won several awards for their remote access products yet they have been losing money latley. Cabletron is a well known name in the networking industry and they aren't making money either. AMD makes a perfectly good microprocessor but they can't seem to stay profitable either. Huge well known disk drive companies like Segate and Western Digital make perfectly good procucts but they have been struggling to earn money. FOR THE LAST TIME, making good products does not equal profits! I have never used an Osicom product (I don't deny they exist) so I can't say whether they are good products or not. THAT'S NOT ENOUGH!