To: STEVE SAMEULS who wrote (7617 ) 8/8/1998 10:51:00 PM From: James Harold Alton Respond to
Steve, I just read Joe Medskers response to your post and think that he did a good job of evaluating the current situation. There is no doubt that the companies fundamentals have been improving dramatically over the last several months. Some of the largest deals, Locus and TimeWorldCom lack finalization, but at the moment look very likely. This improvement in the fundamentals is also reflected on our value per share, because DCI has been able to to a good job in keeping the expansion of shares under control. As to why we are not seeing this improvement in our share price, I would suggest that you look at our chart over the 5 day period from July 27th-31st. This was the first extended period in recent history during which time our overhead (MM's having shares to sell) was essentially 0, up until about midday on the 31st when that overhead selling returned. That time period shows us what our stock would be doing if not for the overhead IMO. It would be really interesting to see where we would stabilize, if that overhead were gone for about 2 months, but I am not sure if we will get to see that happen anytime soon. It is my opinion, that our big sellers, actually keep pretty good track of the status of DCI and stopped the selling during that time period in the hopes that there might be some news forthcoming at the meeting with regards to selling DCI, when this did not happen, the sellers returned. Ironically, I believe that the best way DCTC could gain more interest would be for us to move up to a more reasonable price range, but it's the catch 22 that is preventing this from happening. I can tell you that I remain long in DCTC and that I feel very good about the risk to reward ratio, in fact I would say that this ratio is probably the greatest it has ever been since I have owned this stock. Ask yourself, "what is the very least I can imagine Joe being able to sell this company for if he had to do it tommorrow? " . It's the answer to this question that helps me the most in getting through these periods of our stock being hammered like it is now. Just for fun, try calculating how long it would take at today's bond yields to turn $1.71 into $10, this helps me to put the "reward" portion of the equation into better perspective and also helps in the area of patience. (G)
