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

To: Hockeyfan who wrote (2435)	4/16/1998 3:27:00 PM
From: David	Respond to of 3506

Report on the conference call . . . . It was a fairly short call, with brief characterizations by Charles Trimble and a quick rundown of stats by Dennis Ing, followed by a few Q and A's. Here are some highlights: * Trimble conceded they had some inefficiency in the quarter due to overcapacity problems, specifically, it seems, a lack of assembly area room requiring overtime shifts. This will be fixed in the next couple of weeks. Also, I think the workers were unfamiliar with some of the assembly, but now are more productive. This looked to be a $700K hit. Trimble said they had been aiming at gross margins of about 52%, and now thought things were "on track." Whether they hit that number next quarter, he and Ing couldn't say, but I got the impression it would be there or close. They said it was an "all time" record quarter for actual production of goods. Trimble described himself as "pretty satisfied." The annual national conference seemed to be a $500K hit to the bottom line. * Year to year, land survey segment was up 44%; GIS/mapping, up 14%, mobile services and communications up 76% (small segment, I think), aerospace up 41% (gotta be the CUGR business), and software down 7% (due to loss of Onstar business as well as Geotek(?)). Geographically, year to year, the Americas were up 23%, Europe/Middle East/Africa was up 26%, and Asia was up 42%. The against the trend rebound in Asia was due to the sad state of affairs in Japan a year ago and the new Topcon distribution deal for land survey equipment. * SGA was down to 31.3% from 34.3% a year ago, right in line with TRMB's goals. * Trimble actually was asked a question on the timing market and Nortel, by the Schroder's analyst. He said he expected a major pickup in the software segment driven by the timing device in the last two quarters of this year and in 1999. It sounded to me like TRMB is still suffering some growing pains, but they are managing to handle them better than in the past. As Charles Trimble said in the call, "if you have to have a problem, [overcapacity] is the problem to have."