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

To: William Wang who wrote (3270)	5/21/1998 5:36:00 PM
From: William Wang	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 5058

I am very disappointed with this thread. NO response after I posted the Smith Barney research article. Well, I don't think I need to post another just released paper regarding to the May 12 Storage Conference that Dennis R. Duke has mentioned. Feedback from the May 12 Storage Conference - Part I of II Salomon Smith Barney (DEAN/ROTHACHER (415) 951-1622) QNTM --SUMMARY:------------------------------------------------------------------ The Salomon Smith Barney Storage Conference on May 12 was a great success, with 34 companies presenting on seven panels and numerous breakouts. We counted more than 350 attendees, including 34 presenting companies and more than 250 investors. Below, we note some of the more important information that came out of the conference. We cover the panels roughly in the order that they were presented during the conference day. ------------------------- (to be continued)

To: William Wang who wrote (3270)	5/21/1998 9:42:00 PM
From: Dennis R. Duke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5058

Amen. SSB finally sees what we do. Copied from a response to a Private Message that I just wrote, but thought might be of interest to the thread: I just got back from San Francisco. Went to the ASND shareholders meeting, got to visit with three other SIers in person and one lurker (that was a very informational session) and stopped by the Read-Rite facilities. By accident I got to walk through their clean room facility, too. Guess what? There is a good amount of activity there. Lots of people wearing Intel commercial type clean room stuff. The parking lot was reasonably full, too. Employees working in the halls were happy and busy. No moaning or complaints. Just working to get things done. It was fun. Katie was out of the office for the weekend. John was in meetings. As dumb as this may sound I quizzed the receptionist about activity. She reported that volume has not dropped, nor has morale. I spoke in person to the receptionist at ASND when it was 50% lower than today. Got the same answers about business activity. Personally, I think the receptionist test has validity. BTW, John called to see if I was at least able to pick-up an investor's package. And reported that there is nothing new or different from my post about our conversation. He left it open for me to call him tomorrow in the afternoon when he is out of meetings. I have been away from my info and the thread since yesterday's close. I am going to go get my jog in before it gets dark. William, I just wish I had had the courage today to sell other positions and buy more RDRT, but did not. But your post makes be feel better about my current position. Thank You, Dennis

To: William Wang who wrote (3270)	5/22/1998 11:18:00 PM
From: Dennis R. Duke	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 5058

I spoke to John Kurtzweil, CFO at RDRT, again this afternoon. He said some interesting things: 8-) SSB's prior rating was a "Buy" not a "Strong Buy" according to John. He was going call SSB's John Dean, to check on why that was not covered by the press. Maybe we will see that on Tuesday. He confirmed that it is not Katie's job to get the upgrades to the services. 8-) He mentioned that Morgan Stanley had also made positive comments on RDRT. Does anyone have access to Morgan Stanley's reports. I wonder what they said. He mentioned that their opinion was that this downturn is over done. 8-) The apparent problem with the MR transition from 2.1 to 2.8 has been with instability. They think they have that handled. 8-) TBowls sent me his CC summary. The number of products in that review is impressive. 2.8, 3.4, 4.3, prototype 5 to 8.2 GB units. It looks like if the instability issue is has past then the future could be much better. 8-) John said that the 2.8 qualifications are less than 50% completed and RDRT stands a good chance of getting many of the qualifications. 8-) The other thing that I found interesting was the expectation that the 2.8 is a short lived program. It is expected that 3.4 will be shipping as earlier as September '98 and substantial by December '98. After that comes 4.2's in 1st half '99, followed by 6's in the back half of '99. The '99 stuff is GMR based, or at least the company is expecting to ship GMR in '99. So it appears they have a handle on the future product delivery requirements. When I asked about the prototype 5 to 8.2GB's he said that will be next year and will be both Enterprise and Desktop. When I said "So it appears that the 2.8 is really only a quarter or so negative. To that thought John said more like a few months. 8-( From TBowls CC summary I noted the following Q&A from John Dean at SSB: Q: How many Quals at 2.1, 2.8 and 3.4 programs has RDRT received? A: 4 products on the 2.1 which is the best in the industry. No announcements at 2.8 now, but we are hopeful that in the next few weeks that we will be able to announce something on a number of programs. Nobody has qualified a 3.4 out there yet I pressed John on where is the announcement, can we expect that since the two weeks are nearly up that one will be made next week. He said that it is a two step process. First they must qualify, then the manufacturer has to approval a program for use of the qualification. So the timing is difficult for them to control. I continued to press and asked if they had qualified, but had not received approval to release the qualification. This is where John got uncomfortable and would not answer. The voice indicated to me that they had qualified, but they have not been give approval to announce it yet. But that is my guess, and not comfirmable. 8-) Building 1, which is where I walked through, is Tape Head Wafers, NPI, Slider Fab group and some others. Again, morale was good, and people were working. 8-) I asked about margin improvement in this quarter for the revenue mix shift towards MR. Also asked about the reported growth numbers of 10-20% in this Q. John said that the increased sales will also help cover more of the large overhead costs and margins will improve. I pushed to see if he would commit to 10% or 20%, and he would not say at what end of that range they expect. He said it changes from day to day. The CC notes say that Seagate will be getting MR 2.1's this Q. Have a nice weekend, Dennis