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Technology Stocks : Visioneer (VSNR): Does anybody know what's going on? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Benjamin Ostrom who wrote (1335)	3/30/1998 1:03:00 AM
From: Ian_s	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1763

Some observations based on trips to several stores in both Northern California and Southern California: (and then some OPINIONS...) -CompUSA in So. CA. had almost no Visioneer Scanners in stock. A very knowledgable sales person told me they are expecting the new "6000 B" model in the early part of April. I asked if the reason they had nothing on their shelves was because they sell a lot of Visioneer, or because they don't sell very many. He told me they sold a lot of V. product when they actually had them in stock. I asked what he recommended when customers come in. He steered me to the $300 HP model, but admitted the V. model had 'superb' software. Otherwise he categorized the V. 3100 as average. This store had no rebate forms visible anywhere, and no Strobes in stock. This store had 1 box of OCR100 on the shelf, and several boxes of Paperport DLX on the software shelves. -I noticed the new Storm flatbed is a grey/black color (VERY similar in color to the Strobe's color). This unit was at both the CompUSA store, and a BestBuy store. -At a BestBuy store in Southern CA. they had rebate forms (for Visioneer) very visible. They also had the V. 6000 B model in stock. I'm not sure what the 6000 B has that the 6000 did not. Any input on this will be appreciated. The 6000 is supposed to be discontinued though. This BestBuy also had the 3100 and a Strobe, all on display. This store had 3-6 boxes each of OCR 100, and Paperport DLX in stock, on the shelves. -There is a "Gateway Country" store opening up down in So.CA. They are basically a showroom of Gateway 2k product. You can touch and feel all the product, and even order product online, within the store. They don't have an inventory, but drop ship directly to your home (from the main Gateway distributor...wherever in middle America that is). The store was setting up for it's grand opening on Tuesday of this week. I saw several Visioneer 6000 flatbed boxes, that looked like they were getting set to be put on diplay. Good news. -No. CA. - the Fry's in Santa Clara (off the 101), had a huge inventory of V. product. 6000's, 3100's, Strobes, OCR100, and Paperport DLX....in the case of scanners, there were even boxes piled on the floor making small statue (maybe 15 boxes). More good news. Opinion: Unless Visioneer MGMT has done something unexpected regarding expenses (i.e., pushing them too high, more R&D than predicted on OCR100 or USB), this is going to be a great quarter. It looks like V. has already shipped as many scanners as last quarter...with more time to go. Add to this: + more shipments of scanners to come...6000B needs to fill the channel + new found software revenue + plus the growing scanner market in general + price breaking to new lows on high quality ink jet printers (if so many more people can print high quality photo output, why not be able to scan those photos for as little as $99) - this line item alone is VERY important for V.'s upcoming future - could have been a whole rambling posting on it's own ... ;) + V. MGMT seems to be holding strong on their 20/20 goal (from conference call). The important part here is that they are not crumbling on their price point on the market...I've seen lesser brands for as little as $69 after rebate. Universally I here from sales people in every store I've been in, "the V. software is great, simple to use...blah blah blah". This is what will differentiate V. from the soon to be $49 scanners. All in all, I believe this will be a great quarter for V. I'm predicting a blowout of analyst numbers, with EPS of .03 to .05 (V. is also close to having it's 10-day moving average not only break through it's 50-day, but now also it's 200-day. "IF" we see any kind of upward movement early in the week, I think we'll be above $4 shortly there after.) Well, I guess I'm really out on a limb now...