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Technology Stocks : IFMX - Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Austin who wrote (11030)	6/6/1998 2:47:00 AM
From: treetopflier	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14631

Free on NT, gosh we beat SYBS and MSFT -- wow! Sybase had to go to all the trouble of getting Microsoft to put their software on NT and a funny thing happened on the way -- not so funny for SYBS. Seems those SQL Server revenues they hoped for never materialized. Seems to happen when 'MS' appears in the logo. Thank heavens IFMX found a way to avoid all that hassle. And IFMX beat MSFT on price too, even beat them on their price for MS Access. Maybe we'll see pressure on MSFT to lower their prices. WHERE ARE THE REVENUES??? Oh yeah, we'll sell them our new client/server development tools. Let's see now, what was MSFT charging for VB these days? Hmmm, oh, how about consulting? Yeah, we'll sell them consulting! No, they feel anything they got for free they can do themselves. We'll at least we can charge for maintenance if they use the stuff. Let's include a few bugs... (just kidding!, but you get the point) Instant Sniff Test Analysis........(BAD). Oh I forgot, we want to keep those down so our market cap stays at a level where someone might do the analysis and pick us up. Beats having to manage the daylights out of this beast by ourselves as we decline. Now, to answer the question asked a couple of posts ago requires a few numbers -- 'Is IFMX a takeover candidate?' We need these for the current fiscal -- consulting revenue R&D expenses maintenance revenues Could probably look these up, but I'm sure one of you knows and it is getting late. There is a relatively straightforward way to figure out the market valuation level that needs underachieved before Computer Associates (a.k.a The Undertaker, a.k.a. The Borg) ears perk up. Remember Ingres? Why CA you ask? Because everyone else that needs an RDBMS has one or runs on all of them, the margins have disappeared (don't kid yourselves, remember FREE ON NT), and the tool set, while cool to those converting from IFMX old character based tools, isn't going to sell outside those circles, diminishing circles. How about a hardware company? Nope -- they need big alliances with companies having broad product sets, big consulting orgs and apps to compete with IBM and IBM surely doesn't need IFMX. Oracle maybe, for the maintenance revenues? No, not their style. The technology or developers maybe, but didn't they already get a bunch of those last year? Larry has always said IFMX had 'competent' technology, but he never said, 'gee wish we could do that'. How's that Kanji character set... nah, they already own a piece of Oracle. All CA wants is the installed base's maintenance revenue stream and a few increment sales of existing products and licenses. IFMX is GRAVY to CA at the right price, just like most of their other acquisitions. They do this VERY well. This is still a long term short unless already at a market cap level where purchasing the maintenance annuity makes sense to CA. At $1.2B with $600M+ in annual revs, I'd say takover is still not in sight. Recent uptick is wishful thinking and a 'thank you for tightening your belts'. This is NOT a technical assessment of the product line so don't get upset. I happen to like the product set. Fact is the market share isn't there and there are 15 Oracle sales people and 20 IBM sales people for every Informix sales person. Oracle and IBM's joint R&D expenditures for these products exceeds Informix revenue. Get the picture... GAME OVER. Stop worrying about SYBS...their game is over too. Personally, I'd like to see ORCL acquire IFMX, rather than The Borg, but I'm not managing Oracle these days... who is, and have they got $1.5B for IFMX? -- likely not. Fly low, sell high...