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Technology Stocks : THQ,Inc. (THQI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AreWeThereYet who wrote (6093)	6/16/1998 2:55:00 PM
From: Joe Btfsplk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14266

A bigger bundle of Biddles. Congrats. More from AOL: Subject: My take on the S/H meeting From: steinadilo@aol.com (Steinadilo) Date: 15 Jun 1998 20:49:45 EDT I really enjoyed the meeting. I'll try not to repeat Jan too much. Rookie, Dtflas and Yamamura were there. 1. The Quest commercial was pretty good. My only complaint is that on at least one action shot, the frame rate did not look adequate. Brian was casting a spell and the "wave" created by the spell did not propagate very cleanly. What I really liked besides the many action shots was the big dragon and at the very end a shot of the gorgeous little princess. Sex appeal sells baby. 2. Hot preview for Redjack. I can't wait to try my demo disk. 3. Granstream. As Jan said, no tv support. I got the impression that Brian wished he did not have two hot RPGs coming out about the same time. He said they were too close together to dilute with more TV and that now that Granstream was getting so much hype it was too late to add a tv component. My guess is he wishes he could. 4. Dr. ___ Wallace (I forgot). There was a very smart large shareholder there who made the comment about $3 EPS this year. He sounded just like us. He had people out doing channel checks and was using his grandkids as guinea pigs. He said his research staff estimates 1 million units for quest and $3. Every time he said something the room either erupted in sympathetic squealing or nervous laughter. He was extremely concerned about EBs and Best Buys that were selling out and would not be restocked before sales were lost. Brian and Locke (sales) did not do a convincing job of convincing the crowd that there would be enough. Although Brian is correct in saying that EB and others have reserves in their central warehouses, it is clear that THQ cannot ensure that all channels will have product to sell once the commercials start running. Brian seemed to refuse to believe that we had confirmation that many locations were sold out. He also went into detail on their critically acclaimed inventory controls. 5. I asked why analysts, despite being guided by management, were actually giving us a 1998 EPS below our trailing 12 months EPS. (2.00 vs 2.09) Sadly, his response was that my numbers were not correct. He said as far as he knew the analysts were giving us a reasonable projection. Dr. Wallace continued my question and supported my numbers. I think Brian is just not thinking in terms of 12 month trailing. He's thinking just year to year. The $2.09 trailing figure did not sound familiar to him. 6. Excession will be released Feb '99. 7. Options. I asked how we compared to others in our industry. He said we compare favorably to ERTS and ATVI. I asked Gysi where all those other shares came from last year that were not related to the Options Plan. He told me even he was sometimes surprised by warrants that came before him to be exercised. He didn't always know at first where they came from. Apparently this is yet another dilutive factor we have to deal with. I asked him where the shares will come from to give to JAKK and WWF. He said that is not defined yet but, since it is not a buyout of any sort, it will not come out of the Option Plan but will likely be warrants as well (don't hold him to that). Someone recently posted that these grants would affect the proposal we voted on but it does not. All in all, if you take this grant by itself it's not a bad deal for us. None of those options are likely to be granted at much less than $30. By the way, a number of options are being declared today at the exercise price of $28 1/8. Boy am I glad for WWF or we would have given em out at $21. Entry level employees can expect 500 options. high level people can get up to 25,000. 8. Some questions I thought would be in bad taste to ask but Jan got in some really good ones afterward. I did not ask what management would do to increase s/h value (they already have). Also no point in asking if there are suitors - like he would answer - or if they would ask for more options next year. I didn't want to focus on something so far away. We all personally told management what a great job they have done. Gysi definitely reads the board. He told me that he is so unconcerned about options (CBOE options) that he skips all those posts. I assume he also skips all the FA/TA ones as well. Everyone was pretty respectful of us. No one asked the BOD any questions. They said nary a word but looked pleasant. However, their lawyer and some other guy did seem mildly amused by our recent "activism." It's great being able to reach out and touch these guys who are making us so much money. I have tremendous respect for them, especially Gysi (;-) and I'm longer than ever. Regards, Rick