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Technology Stocks : Vari-L (VARL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Boris Yeltsin who wrote (632)	3/9/1998 3:24:00 PM
From: Gerald Walls	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2702

Yes I am interested in what Vari-L had to day at the conference. All your post gave me was information about a couple of medical companies. Sorry about that. I just started out to jot a quick note that the company had made a presentation and then I expanded the notes for the other companies and forgot to expand the VARL note. I guess VARL's story isn't sexy like the other companies and is a bit dry to encapsulate. That said, I did buy some this morning and I haven't bought either of other two, at least yet. Vari-L basically gave a presentation explaining their business and describing their product line. They called particular attention to their patented low cost 1.2-volt 5.8 GHz Voltage Controlled Oscillator and their patented (issued 4/97) light-to-radio frequency Wide Band Transformer. They also said that the company is seeking to maintain its military business (and they so far have, even as the military market shrinks) and to aggressively grow the consumer portion of the commercial market where they see the most business volume potential. Vari-L presented graphs showing 1993 through 1997 revenue and earnings growth. They mentioned that they had little Asian exposure as most of their overseas business is in Europe. Vari-L listed major defense and commercial customers. Two of their big commercial customers are Ericson (sp?) and Nokia in Europe for their cell phones. They're looking for this segment of the business to rapidly expand as PCS cellular is adopted in the US. There wasn't a slide predicting future growth but I believe they said while showing the past year's growth that they expected it to continue. I think that they said they were comfortable with current estimates but I attended about six 25-minute presentations and that could have been from a different presentation. Aside from the presentation, Zacks has a 5-year earnings growth forecast of 30% and the trailing PE is about 25. Zacks also shows three (unnamed) regional brokers rating VARL as a "strong buy" with Zack's Z-factor also rating VARL as a "strong buy." Market Edge's Weekly Second Opinion (mostly technical factors) upgraded VARL from Neutral to Buy (but not Strong Buy) over the weekend. Insiders sold 18,000 shares in the last reported month with no reported buys but collectively ended the month with more shares than they started with so it was probably EOY/BOY options related. Vector Vest (I think this is where I saw this info as I'm typing all this from memory) mechanically computes a fair value of about 14-1/2 and rates VARL as "about average" safety with "much better than average" return potential.