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Technology Stocks : INVX Innovex Comdex Winner !! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Daveyk who wrote (2478)	5/16/1998 1:32:00 PM
From: Mark Oliver	Respond to of 3029

Dave, I was pleased, and hurt to see INVX end below 22 1/2 as I had some covered calls expire yesterday. Looking forward, I don't know what to think. I had expected the market to react more favorably to the supposed end of inventory over hang, but perhaps that didn't happen. Beating TSA is probably not possible. They will both be selling and winning accounts. It's a shame because INVX is such a better company, with what may end up being the lesser product. Hutch is also selling TSA components to other suspension companies. It's still not a done deal though. Hopefully, Hutch will continue their pattern of dismal production capability. Must make anyone doing business with them nervous. It seems in the short term, we'll see unit sales picking up and probably the worst is over. I don't know when next quarter reports, but it's still a long way off. As I've said before, the issue today is how many platters are going into a drive, inventory, and getting value out of other projects. TSA and HIF are still such high end projects that they are not going to make or break next quarter. I'm going to here a speech from Trend Focus in Santa Clara next month. Perhaps I'll learn more then. Last year they were kind enough to share their years projections a few days before publishing. Let me know if you want to attend. Selling calls is probably a good plan. It's perhaps at a low now, but it could well go lower. I would be looking at near money calls. The market doesn't feel very good, but that changes in a blink. I'd rather see the stock rise to 24 before selling a call. In the end, I'm more interested in other stories. Storage is stuck at the moment and may well be dead money for a few quarters. I'm more interested in other sectors. My stable company that's down pick for the moment is Checkpoint CHKPF. They are the leading firewall vendor. Question of competition from Microsoft broke the stock down. The issue seems to have been resolved. Many strong buys. Should recover. I would be very interested in buying if it dips again. I'm looking for 40+ in 6 months and 35+ short term. oday it's around 31. My gambling money is on General Magic. They have some amazing patents and they have projects that will hit the press in June/July which could give you a big profit. In the meantime, there will be some backing and filling. A dip below 10 seems to be a good bet. I'm looking for 15+ and maybe even 20 in 3 months depending on the news. Also, they have such a big collection of important patents, they are surely a target. Another interesting story in HLIT, selling into cable infrastructure. Not at it's low, but attractive. TCI and many others have announced major spending plans. Weather will drive big sales this sumer. Strong technology. PCTV is the wild one. They have been threatened with delisting, again, and they have been a project on hold by the FCC for a long time. The technology, wireless cable which includes very high speed datacom is possibly a very cool application. Well, the interesting thing is looking at SEC reports show that 27% of the stock was purchased by amoung others Fidelity in the end of Feb. Could be an interesting deal for your mad money. Another fund don't know is BCI Growth III who bought 7.5% and Robert Fleming, Inc who bought 9.6%. The owner doubled their stake through a holding company as well. They have rights to Chicago, Detroit, Phoenix and some others I don't remember. Could be a nice move. It went up about 22% yesterday. It's up about 75% for the week. Anyway, as much as I love Innovex, I have to realize that I doubt it will double in the next 6 months. While that's not always the reason to buy, it's nice to think it could happen. I expect a trading range will continue with INVX. Playing it canbe very profitable. If boredom sets in, 20 is a strong possibility. Regards, Mark

To: Daveyk who wrote (2478)	5/18/1998 1:56:00 AM
From: Mark Oliver	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3029

Sunday May 17, 6:02 am Eastern Time Seagate says worst over for disk drive industry By Josephine Ng SINGAPORE, May 17 (Reuters) - The worst is over for the disk drive industry, Seagate Technology's (SEG - news) chief executive Alan Shugart said on Sunday. ''I think it has bottomed out. We have seen inventories really dropped. The competitors all seem to have cut back capacity to manufacture like we have done,'' Shugart told reporters at an informal meeting in Singapore. Shugart was in Singapore for a regular meeting with employees. Plummeting prices due to worldwide excess capacity in the industry have been pressuring performances of big disk drive makers Seagate, Quantum (QNTM - news) and Western Digital (WDC - news) over the last year. Seagate in its latest third quarter results reported a loss of $128.5 million or 53 cents a share, against a net income of $256.8 million or $1.01 a share in the same quarter a year ago. This included a restructuring charge of $165.7 million to cover the cost of laying off about 10,000 workers. Shugart said price erosions in the second half of 1998 should not be as bad as in the first half but he declined to say how much prices had fallen in the first six months. ''We ought to see bigger demand for disk drives in the last half of 1998 compared to the first half,'' he said. He said recovery signs might not be obvious until the later part of the year. The bulk of demand for disk drives would continue to come from the United States, he said. In Asia, Seagate was surprised that in its third quarter ended March, sales contribution from the region had not dropped but stayed similar to that in the second quarter. But Europe's contribution fell, going against bullish expectations since the computer industry there was supposed to be doing well, he said. Shugart declined to predict whether Seagate would return to the black in its fourth quarter but said: ''I sure would be disappointed if we weren't (profitable).'' He said the steps the company had taken in the last six months in downsizing were to put it in a position to make profits at lower revenue levels. The company had cut its staff to 88,000, from 111,000 six to nine months ago, he said. At present, Seagate did not expect to cut staff on a large scale, although cuts could never be ruled out, he said. Seagate was also working on shortening its production cycle to cope better with new build-to-order processes adopted by personal compurter makers, he said. Shugart said Seagate had cash and marketable securities of $1.72 billion as of its third quarter, which he said was one of its strengths to weather any storm in the industry. On reports of Seagate's loss in market share to smaller players like IBM (IBM - news), Japan's Fujitsu (6755.T) and Maxtor Corp, a unit of Korea's Hyundai Electronics (00660.KS), Shugart said he was sceptical of data provided by research houses. At a time when companies were cutting prices to reduce inventories, market share was not meaningful, he said, but conceded that IBM and Fujitsu had done a good job at penetrating the high-end market in the last two quarters. On Asia's economic problems, he said he was confident of a recovery in the region. He still expected the Asia Pacific eventually to make the same contribution as Europe to Seagate's revenue. Seagate was not making any changes in its Asia production except to move its Thailand disk drive manufacturing to Singapore. Thailand would focus on making components, he said. Manufacturing of printed circuit boards in Batam in Indonesia was unaffected by the unrest in Indonesia so far, he said. But Seagate was keeping a close watch to make sure employees were safe, he said.