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Non-Tech : Iomega Thread without Iomega -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sheila rothstein who wrote (200)	6/29/1998 9:26:00 AM
From: Alan Rosen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10072

I was zipping along the tollway at 75 when I heard the Nomai news on local radio, almost broke 100! This will be excellent for the stock and the longer term prospects of the company. Some will want us to believe that this is desperation move but this is the move of a company going forward, not fighting for its' life. As to the CEO situation, I think that they still need a vision/big picture guy...with a v.p. for q.a. archcc

To: sheila rothstein who wrote (200)	6/29/1998 9:33:00 AM
From: Reseller	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10072

Just a couple of comments IOM needed a second source for Zip disk media and perhaps Clik! as well. They probably bought the company for what the lawyer fees would have cost them. They paid Nomai 3mil for certain technology ? mmm There's a good possibility that the new CEO is on board, this is the right move. I wondered what the deal was with the big push to move disks in the last few weeks. They probably sold enough to pay for the purchase of Nomai. In my mind this is a major coup for IOM. Regards Reseller

To: sheila rothstein who wrote (200)	6/29/1998 10:09:00 AM
From: Bill Lin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10072

Sheila, I think Zip is still the cash cow franchise, which IOM has to focus on. I went back and tried to do an inventory analysis on why costs were so high, and when the high cost material inventory would be flushed out of the system, and I could not figure it out. I still think that sales of zip plus and jaz 1/2 are way below expectations. This really impacted jaz 1/2 disk sales. So I think the majority of old inventory (older than 90 days), is related to the jaz 1/2. The problem with MR and GMR removable disks, is that the head has to fly microinches above the platter. With continual insertion and removal of disks, it is very difficult to keep the head in alignment. So the Nomai technology may or may not help IOM. The extra 21 mm spent (plus $3mm?) seems kind of stupid, given that IOM is supposed to be 85mm cash flow negative this qtr. Now they want to make it an even $100mm? Or did Sierk include this in his forecast? Last qtr, he did underforecast and overperform a bit. IOM won't go belly up any time soon, IMO. And it is a very strong take over target, also IMO. Biggest risk is over pricing of product and Sony HiFD. Nothing will happen to IOM until software is released in zip 100 cartridges. This is why tie ratios are so low (vs expectations). Maybe Nomai tech will lower IOM cartridge production costs? The 2 disk Jaz and Jaz2 technology makes their product about 30% more expensive to manufacture than it should cost. Cost is the extra head and motor mechanism. Cost of platter is not low enough to offset the extra labor and inventory mgmt costs. Clik! cannot be IOM's savior. There just isn't enough volume. At least in the 1st 2 years. Maybe later on. Usually company turn arounds take 3 qtrs-3 yrs. This may be the bad qtr. I have no idea. I did not like Sierk's interview with CNBC last week. Just saw it on tape. He did not say anything of note. I thought Cramer was very displeased with his insistence that things are fine and turning around. I'd like to see an inventory write down this qtr. I would view that as positive. then dump the jaz 1/2 and redesign them to be 1 platter solutions and lower the cartridge costs to $40/$70. The name of the game in the next 3 yrs is LOW COST. Any HDD manufacturer who thinks their product can command a premium has only to look at the $/gig curve in last 18 months. BL