Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Adaptec (ADPT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: OrionX who wrote (2587)	6/11/1998 7:06:00 PM
From: Mark	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5944

Mauro, Please excuse if I am blunt, but I think you are relatively new to the thread and you may need to research further back on what many believe has been an extremely well informed debate on the demise of ADPT....... (possibly a little OTT on my part, coz I note you were talking with Torben at least as far back as the start of May). Some specific points - most people who talk about adpt's stock deterioration being representative of the company's viability, probably don't know squat about the products adaptec makes and their related market There are at least three professionals here who know about the current and future trends in the market, and who work with ADPT's products. I agree the stock is under pressure from misinformed investors and stock manipulation by those with big enough pockets to move the stock where they want it and of course general market behaviour which in the last few weeks has been a pisser. I think if you look at the cause and effect relationships here you will see that ADPT are presently in trouble (relative to previous projections). They have recently been earning less than expected. Their revenues are also lower than projections (in fact contracting). The most recent projections suggest that ADPT will have (another) poor quarter, or two....... This is NOT a case of a few small investors panicking madly, and driving down the stock. Even now the company has a market cap of > $1.5Bn. How much influence do you think this thread has ? The most recent EPS projection (and therefore the most accurate ?) says we'll get 15c this Q....... That's not promising. When people start saying SCSI is dead and all that crap I really wonder about the sanity of some people or what kind of sloppy DD they've done. Perhaps when people say that "SCSI is dead" they mean that it is dying to such an extent that SCSI will never again provide the profit levels for ADPT that it has previously. For the specialist players operating at the high-end of the market, there will still be time to make good $$ (for a while). For ADPT, this time has now passed. Do these people really understand that a computer system is only as good as it's weakest element ie. I/O. According to the type of application you are running, I/O may or may not be the weakest link. There is quite a valid argument which says that memory's inability to "feed" a high performance processor is far more significant. The day any serious web site or corporate server gets saddled with only EIDE or even UDMA drives will be the day technology starts to reverse back to the stone age. Perhaps you can educate us why in a single controller/drive arrangement EIDE/UDMA is at a performance disadvantage to SCSI ? (Physically the bottleneck is the medium - i.e. the bit rate under the head, and the seek rate, neither of which need be further limited by current "interfaces"). On some thread I heard some shlop about EIDE/UDMA based raid devices. Perhaps the full title "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks" affords some clues to why this isn't such a bad idea........ If you can install two EIDE drives at the same cost as one SCSI, and it provides higher performance, plus redundancy, why would it not be preferable ? YEAH RIGHT! GIMME A BREAK! Certainly, Neck ? Leg ? What do you prefer ? :) But being serious folks, SCSI today has fewer reasons to justify it than ever before. On a market share basis it is in decline. In a declining market only two types of company survive - (a) the "commodity" player who "owns" the market and can keep costs well below (diminishing) revenues, (b) the "value-add" player who can command a margin premium. I fear that in the SCSI market, Adaptec falls somewhat between the two camps. It has "owned" the market, and has enjoyed high margins. However, it has not been aggressive enough with it's product development to own the high ground. Whether it can now be sufficiently "fleet of foot" to remain profitable in the declining (by $) SCSI market is now the critical issue (short term). (FWIW - I suspect that QLogic will retain the high-ground, but will also experience SCSI profit erosion). Mark

To: OrionX who wrote (2587)	6/12/1998 12:06:00 AM
From: JRH	Respond to of 5944

When people start saying SCSI is dead and all that crap I really wonder about the sanity of some people or what kind of sloppy DD they've done. Do these people really understand that a computer system is only as good as it's weakest element ie. I/O. SCSI is far from dead, obviously. Looking at forecasts for the server class HDD's, I see growth in one major player (I don't know about the others, haven't researched 'em enough) in the next generation SCSI, that would be Low Voltage Differential SCSI (a.k.a. LVDS). Fiber Channel and SSA are just too low volume. LVDS is where it is at. I am assuming (and only assuming) that Adaptec has this arena covered....