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Technology Stocks : HWP -- Hewlett Packard -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas G. Busillo who wrote (2136)	5/14/1998 1:04:00 AM
From: Lazlo Pierce	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4722

Thomas, I agree 100% w/ your comments. The thing that really surprises me on this thread is noone has mentioned the fact that HWP HAD to have known about missing these #s awhile ago. All the while the stock was running up 20 points. I was under the impression that the company has a duty to their shareholders to report material data as soon as it is learned. That is why companies warn early, like Intel, and CPQ amongst others. For HWP to miss by .12, and earn less than last years Q, they MUST have known by midway thru the quarter's final month. And to let this last run go, without saying a word till now is actionable (if that scenario is indeed true). I would hate to have been the investor who bought in today in the low 80s. Dave Tom<<"we are disappointed that our early calculations show earnings per share coming in well short of expectations,'' Hewlett-Packard Chairman Lewis Platt said in a statement. The Palo Alto-based company said its product mix, as well as pricing pressures in the PC business, were significant factors in its results, which will be released on Friday If these are "early calculations", what's "last minute"? Shareholders are expected to believe that it was not until less than 48 hours until earnings were scheduled to be released that the bean counters figured out the Q would be not just a little light, but "well short of expectations"? There was no indication whatsoever over the course of the quarter that this would happen? Why bother to even pre-announce now? And if you're going to do it, why use the word "early" to describe this realization less than 48 hours before earnings are due?>>

To: Thomas G. Busillo who wrote (2136)	5/14/1998 1:27:00 AM
From: BelowTheCrowd	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4722

> our early calculations This was written by the lawyers, not the PR people. They can't call it the "final" number until earnings are officially announced and reported, which won't happen until Friday. A better way of putting it might have been to say that "we expect to report results below wall street expectations," without the charade of the "early calculations" bit. Personally I think this pre-announcement, as well as the early earnings announcement on Friday is also driven by concerns about recent comments by the analysts. In the past few days, several of them have gone truly nuts and indicated much more optimism than existed just a few weeks ago. In the absence of this hype I believe they would have been content to just release earnins on schedule, as they almost always do. With all the hype in the past few days, I think they would have exposed themselves to legal liability if they did not act to quell it as quickly as practical. In truth, I think they're a bit late. There was enough hype a week ago to justify a response. mg