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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nlam who wrote (21736)	3/13/1998 10:51:00 PM
From: Jason W. France	Respond to of 97611

Nlam, fair question... a few initial reasons from a shareholders perspective: if I wanted a vertically integrated company (i.e. IBM, HP. DEC, UNISYS) then I would add that stock to my portfolio. I bought CPQ because they were a leader in a high-growth market. Now I am not sure what they are. historically vertically integrated tech companies have not performed nearly as well as horizontally integrated tech companies. Just for fun plot five year rev growth of IBM/DEC/HP/TANDEM/UNISYS vs. MSFT/INTC/CSCO/DELL/CPQ you will see what I mean. The marketplace has clearly voted for horizontly integrated companies. Which group is the new cpq in? from a strategic standpoint: forgetting about UNIX and alpha stuff that CPQ bought (this market place is in serious decline) then what did CPQ buy? The DEC PC business, haha don';t think so. DEC's superior mgmt... not that? Most people end up with the fact that CPQ bought DEC's superior field service force. But won;t this service force now compete directly with CPQ;s customers (i.e. the resellers) hmmmmm!! competing against your customers is not a strategy that typically works too well. maybe Eckhard knows something we don't about how to do that Finally it is a focus issue. With all the challenges CPQ has fending off the likes of Dell, and implementing ODM, and digesting Tandem, and trying to sell their $400MM of obsolete inventory, I am not sure they have the mgmt bandwidht right now to digest DEC. just one persons opinion. I would welcome any of you CPQ Bulls to list reasons why the DEC merger will increase shareholder value Jason