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

To: Frodo Baxter who wrote (7762)	4/24/1998 4:08:00 AM
From: shane forbes	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9124

Re: Quantum has... voluntarily cut back production and pulled in inventory. My guess is that if they did not do this and instead continued to produce drives and stuff the channel, instead of marginal profits, we'd be seeing the same monster losses as WDC and Maxtor et al. So pick your poison. On the "pricing leader" comment: If they played price leader for a while, again not an easy thing esp. when they don't have the freedom to do so. Bet they would have loved to be pricing leader. Quality is one thing but when people are willing to forego some of the quality for 30-40% reductions in price we have a problem. My guess also is that it depends a lot on where their components come from. Partly because of the Asian currency devalutions, other companies (for example those w/o a vertically integrated structure) with component sources in Asia or direct production in Asia, would have been able to compete favorably on price. (Wild ass guess on QNTM being more vertically integrated than say a WDC?) However let me caveat by saying that I'm only guessing here. I don't know the finer points in the players here at all. Just hazarding wild ass guesses. Shane.

To: Frodo Baxter who wrote (7762)	4/24/1998 5:38:00 AM
From: Z Analyzer	Respond to of 9124

<<Quantum has... voluntarily cut back production and pulled in inventory.>> Lawrence, I agree. QNTM has been the Saudi Arabia of the industry , cutting production voluntarily to preserve pricing. Unfortunately SEG and WDC are now no longer in a position of involuntary cutback caused by their own product execution issues. As they ramp, this industry could stay ugly for quite awhile. QNTM might have been more aggressive had they not been herroraging in the high end and heads. Haven't heard the call yet but someone said Atlas II to be the last. Everyone said no way before when I suggested that QNTM not be in heads and bleeding end of high end. (Viking OK- like WDCs strategy of producing simple high end drives). Later

To: Frodo Baxter who wrote (7762)	4/25/1998 12:34:00 AM
From: Tom Simpson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9124

>and Seagate and Western Digital have bloated their inventories then >barfed them onto the channel. I wonder about that.....this from Seagate's site (in millions of $). INVENTORY q2fy98 q2fy97 Components 313 361 WIP 67 156 FG 381 156 SALES Desktop 705 830 High end 770 1286 Turns 7.8 11.1 Doesn't this sort of look like there may be more barfing yet to come? Could be we have a case of bulemia here. Best Regards.....Tom