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Technology Stocks : MRV Communications (MRVC) opinions? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Marty Lee who wrote (10738)	9/15/1998 11:11:00 AM
From: Robert G. Harrell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42804

Marty, In regards to your question: As you are still long on MRVC, may I assume that the Statement of Operations dated Nov. '96 and the loss of earnings for that quarter didn't "burn" you in terms of thinking the company's accounting something less than "straight?" The fact that I didn't find a problem with the Q3 '96 statement should not be taken as an endorsement. I've never been strong in reading financial statements and I was a lot weaker two years ago. I was very new to the stock back then and very enamored with their technology. I've been learning in the school of hard knocks that great technology, even when you are first, doesn't necessarily translate into strong profitability. Because of my weakness in processing the numbers, I was very ready to accept the analysis of others who seemed to be very strong in this area. There used to be several regular posters who really dug into the numbers and even made bets about EPS reports. I'm still not convinced that MRVC is hiding losses with one time acquisition charges. There don't seem to be enough to play that game but then what do I know. I've been buying books to help me get better at analyzing stocks. I intend to read at least one on how to find good short candidates so I'll be better at spotting warning signs. Perhaps my biggest concern now is not the accounting but how quickly the big boys can overtake MRVC. I recently posted a reference to a press release from 3Com ( or was it CISCO) showing them as the leader in gigabit ethernet sales. A few months back we thought MRVC had a commanding lead. You have to wonder if the same thing may happen with the optical switching products and the terabit router. Even if MRVC is the firstist with the mostist will one of the big boys gobble up the market six months or a year later with their own possibly inferior products. Time will tell... Bob PS. Zacks uses a proprietary model for deriving their ratings which is very heavily weighted to earnings revisions so it's not surprising that they reduced MRVC to a 5. I don't think I would accuse them of following the herd. Often their ratings are very different from the herd.