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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Spartex who wrote (22048)	5/16/1998 6:06:00 PM
From: DJBEINO	Respond to of 42771

Microsoft antitrust talks collapse Historic action by states, Justice now appears likely msnbc.com

To: Spartex who wrote (22048)	5/17/1998 1:17:00 AM
From: omegaman	Respond to of 42771

I would like to hear from other regional resellers on this board as to how their sales efforts are going. In the Chicagoland area, we have well exceeded expectations for our quarter, that came straight from the mouth of our regional Sales Manager(who is commissioned on that). Unfortunately, the midwest is the last place to catch on for technology. Hell, people still think NT is cool here. I cant tell your exactlywhich products made up what % of revenue, or what revenue was, but we did exceed our quotas. Knock knock, any resellers out there???

To: Spartex who wrote (22048)	5/17/1998 11:12:00 PM
From: Paul Fiondella	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

"if an analyst can't find such information, I'll be damned if I can." Well it isn't easy, but as you can see from Salah's post, it is possible to look at what they say and what they do. I agree with Salah that Schmidt hasn't improved sales or revenue at Novell. Schmidt appears to me to be falling into a groove of complacency. There is nothing like good financial press to make a CEO feel that a "turnaround" that hasn't happened yet in revenues has somehow happened in mindspace and is therefore "real" and everything is okay. This can be easily dispelled by reality. You have to show results and in Novell's case that means increased revenues. Unlike Frankenberg, whom I believe was readying the company for a buy-out that was then rejected, Schmidt was brought in to get Novell's product line straightened out, and its technical priorities focused after the disastrous Marengi period. They had missed the Internet boat and couldn't decide what products to build. Schmidt's job has been to get the software priorities straight and get the software out the door. However I do not see any strategy in place for restoring Novell to its former position. Novell is now dependant upon mature corporate network needs (NOS's that control other NOS's---the NDS sell). The Internet leadership promised hasn't materialized yet. It should have shown up in web server NOS sales. In any case here are some numbers I gleaned from searching CRN. "Following impressive gains in the first three quarters of 1997, Microshaft's momentum in the small and midsize-company NOS market has slowed considerably. In the first quarter of 1998, 64% of resellers on average cited MSFT as their best-selling NOS vendor. This figure is little changed from the third quarter of 1997. Second-place Novell however has been unable to gain any ground on its rival." 2Q97 MSFT 51%, NOVL 35%, Others 14% 3Q97 MSFT 61%, NOVL 28%, OThers 11% 4Q97 MSFT 62%, NOVL 27%, OThers 11% 1Q98 MSFT 64%, NOVL 23%, Others 13% A CRN poll in February showed which platforms VARs were currently using to deploy client/server apps. Dec97 MSFT 73%, NOVL 41% Feb98 MSFT 78%, NOVL 33% CRN also published figures about best selling software for April and those figures showed no increases in NOS sales from the first calendar quarter of 1998 to the end of April This means that the NOS market hasn't grown much quarter to quarter for the VAR's surveyed. The pie isn't getting dramatically bigger. With Novell's market share falling, then where are the revenues going to come from for the Feb-April Novell quarter? I don't see any growth. In March CRN asked VARS which vendors offered the best training programs. MSFT 46% (up 6% over 96) NOVL 8% (down 13 % over 96) This probably indicates more about vendor training programs being attended than anything else. ================== Conclusion: We all have to try to dig harder to find the numbers that matter to our "long" or "short" or "maybe" positions.