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Technology Stocks : Motorola (MOT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ali Shahbaz who wrote (1123)	6/4/1998 6:32:00 PM
From: Jock Hutchinson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3436

Ali: I went to college with Chris Galvin. Believe me, he is no Dan Quayle.

To: Ali Shahbaz who wrote (1123)	6/4/1998 7:53:00 PM
From: Ming	Respond to of 3436

It seems that "cnfession season" on Wall Street has begun with a bang. Motorola has the heaviest exposure in Asia. Its annual revenue from Asian operations was more than $6 billion in its communications division alone, of which 2 billion came from Japan. Plus Ericsson & Nokia are not even remotely close to the chip business, which has been devastated by Asia. That should explain some of MOT's recurring problems. There was a major article in a recent edition of Business Week(or was it Fortune, I'm not sure) that exposed in detail management's problems, which began well before Galvin came in. I guess that the recent results point to a potential feud between Galvin, a grandson of MOT's founder, and the execs that work for him. The latter feel that he's too young, and lack technical expertise: he's the first CEO of the company without an engineering background. The news that just came out will make for a very interesting day tomorrow, albeit sadly not for MOT shareholders. I remember a few months ago, when they fell to the 55 range, some money managers were touting it as a major undervalued restructuring play. But management seemed to think otherwise, as they continued to dump their shares with impunity. Until they start showing some moderate interest in their own business, MOT will probably be a graveyard like 3com. As you pointed out, the successive quarters of problems indicate something fundamentally flawed with the company's operations. Maybe if they dumped their computer division, and focused on their communications division, things will get better. These rather unrelated divisions are so huge that they each need management's total and undivided attention, yet only get a fraction of it. A spinoff, of the type that George Fisher has engineered at Kodak(coincidentally , Fisher resigned as MOT's CEO just as the problems were beginning to surface here), will do some good. Kodak has not been exactly a darling of Wall Street, but that is the result of a price war withy Fuji and a declining Yen, and not the management's fault. Its units are worth more as separate entities than as a single conglomerate, and MOT is of the same nature. Regards, Ming Regards, Ming