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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (47502)	6/14/1998 10:40:00 AM
From: Lee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

Morning Chuz,..*Off Topic* Some interesting reading for a lazy Sunday morning. Actually, it's not really off topic since it seems increasingly our markets are affected by global economic events. washingtonpost.com Officials Confirm Japan Is in Recession washingtonpost.com Overview of the Turmoil in Asia (Updated: May 1998) ms.com Global: Back to the Brink Stephen Roach (New York) Regards, Lee

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (47502)	6/14/1998 11:52:00 AM
From: Meathead	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

CTC, your point about leverage is correct as well as the low sales to R&D spending ratio... ~1.5%. Yes, that's a major strength. For 1997 however, almost all of the 204MM R&D expense is related to product development, not manufacturing process improvement. The process improvements are a byproduct of the brainpower within manufacturing engineering and those costs are lumped in with the much larger 1.2B SG&A figure. To be sure, Dell leases about 150,000 sqft of space from Trammel Crow (Braker/Metric facilities) dedicated to housing the Product Group who's activities focus squarely on developing new products. Another little know fact is that of Dell's 300+ awarded patents, a majority are design and utility which translates to electrical and mechanical. I have an engineering friend in who has filed over 45 patents in 4 years with about 20 granted... he is a multi-millionaire just through the options awarded for each patent. Other acquaintences of mine filed many many patents for Dell but left to work for other companies before these options matured... they left millions on the table and are kicking themselves now. A prime example, one top engineer left 1n 1995 to work for a major storage technology company for a 20k bump in annual salary. He had no idea how high this stock would climb... he traded 7 figures of appreciation for ~60k in that timeframe. I know a few more very talented engineers who did likewise. MEATHEAD