Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : BAY Ntwks (under House) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Javelin who wrote (5429)	4/18/1998 4:11:00 AM
From: rupert1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6980

Javelin: I was beginning to wonder if I was the only BAY poster from the UK: seen one or two from India and Germany - I wonder what percentage are US (and West Coast). I also wonder how many shares all participants - posters and lurkers - own; enough to offer our support to a potential acquirer of BAY? (joke). I share your concern about the clarity of BAY's strategy. Listening to House in the CC and in print media interviews he wants to expand out from BAY's installed base into Cisco's. He huffs and puffs a lot about being in the "mission critical" large enterprise sector. I agree with the poster who noted a degree of amateurishness in House's listing of "successes". The list is short and over-reliant on the NY Stock Exchange (won long before House arrived) and, more recently, Ford. There are a number of other respectable wins e.g. Ernst Whinney and University campuses and some IP's but they pale in comparison with the size and number of Cisco wins. (Sometime ago a poster amusingly described BAY's announcement of wins as along the lines of "a sale to Bendover Elementary School which allows all the classrooms to be linked to the Headmaster study"). But I am still charitable enough to put this "huffing and puffing" down to House's essential vocation as a marketing man. He is repeating a mantra, a formula for sales purposes. It grates when used in a meeting of analysts and the input of his CFO in that particular CC was essential to give detail, clarity and convinction. That having been said, House is right to point to the growing size of the pie available to all competitors. Even if he cannot depose Cisco he can have a little of what they are having. He is right to try to diversify (even though current PR has apparently conveyed the message to most analysts that rather than diversifying he is putting all the eggs in the Accelar basket). He is right to stress BAY's adaptibility to all competitive systems, because that is surely the future (it also makes BAY more attractive as a takeover candidate). He is right to have made an early entry through acquisition into the cable modem and voice-over markets, but significant impacts on revenues from thee products will be longer term (but this steak does have some stock market sizzle). He seems to be averse to the low-end, commodity type products characteristic of 3COMS. Within the above strategy, his task is to realise the products as quickly as possible and then to market them more effectively. As I understand it, the nature of the doubts peridocally raised about BAY, can be cyrstallised around tbis thesis: CISCO has a stranglehold and will win in most competitive bids for large scale customers: BAY's products may be superior and avant garde but the masses don't want Apple they want Miscrosoft. If House is the marketing genius his PR would have us believe then he must produce an anthithesis. He appears overly reliant on his Intel experience. I think the branding campaign "Where Information Flows" to which he referred again in the CC, is a good idea poorly executed. I think he is on firmer ground when he insits that BAY must get to the "C-level" executives in existing and potential clients. I also think that a prerequisite for this strategy is superior service and copper-bottomed guarantees of reliability and there are signs that BAY qualifies in this regard. Victor