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Strategies & Market Trends : BFT: Will the tulip craze ever break down? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Pancho Villa who wrote (28)	3/10/1998 10:37:00 PM
From: robert elmasian	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 650

Pancho, You asked for analysts names on BFIT. My info is incomplete, but depending on who and where you ask, there are 4-6 analysts. I have the names of three and where they work. They are Gary Prestopino at Mesirow Financial, Andrew Zarnett at Ladenburg Thalmann, and Bailey Dalton at CIBC Oppenheimer. The first two issued buy ratings in February based on decreases in expenses (mainly $4 mil from refinancing debt) with target prices in the low 30's while Dalton's report was in December and had a target of $24, now surpassed. None of these guys are long-time major analysts though it would be interesting to see what they have to say. It would be particularly good to know whether their firms have any investment banking business with Bally in any of it's incarnations. (I recently read a WSJ article that pointed out that this can bias recommendations up.) It might be even more informative to check with the thinking of the mutual funds you listed that hold large BFIT positions. Sometimes a phone call will get them to give their thinking, particularly if they think you are/might be investing with them. Also, it might be interesting to know what some of SI's fundamental guru's, like Roger Babb or Sankar Acharya, think of this situation. Finally, short interest which increased from about 500,000 to 900,000 shares since the beginning of the year (out of 20 mil outstanding) suggests that there are others out their who share your thinking about BFIT being overvalued. Bob