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Technology Stocks : 3DFX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stuart C Hall who wrote (8290)	10/15/1998 9:00:00 PM
From: Paul A	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

hell.. im here for 2 hours and already cluttering the place with posts. sorry.. ill chill but hadda respond to you since all I do is speculate stock performance 24 hours a day. I actually carry my quotrek into the restroom at work, and also at my side in the car when grabbing lunch if im at the office. I think anything under $12 is ridiculous but of course im going to say that since I now have a position. I am betting I can make an exit if I want by next quarters release. It will take us into the high teens. I also wouldnt at all be surprised to see a pre-earnings positive statement like way back when. would be interesting to hear 'short' views since of course im wouldnt have my money on the long side if I didnt think it was undervalued.

To: Stuart C Hall who wrote (8290)	10/15/1998 9:02:00 PM
From: Michael G. Potter	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16960

I'm going to end up calling 3dfx for a bunch of follow-up questions. The CC had some info, but not enough that I would feel comfortable crunching the numbers yet. Gross margins would've been higher (in the 38ish range like Pat posted) without the write-off. The write-off is troubling for two reasons. First, they said it was good inventory last quarter. 2nd, it is Voodoo2 inventory so it does show that they're heavily discounting the chances of blow out sales. If you assume that much of the inventory is V2 chips (they mentioned that Banshee was tight in supply this quarter), then they have a heck of a lot left. They thought that they'd go into Q1 next year with the inventory on hand (reducing as sales occur). The good news is that they did take a write-off now when news was bad already and that the sales will turn into cash faster as they've already paid for much of the inventory. I'm wondering about Ballard's claim that nVidia doesn't have to worry as much about OEM announcements because they're not public. I seem to recall that STB and Diamond have been making the announcements and they're public companies. STB really depends on OEMs so they're highly unlikely to want to make OEMs mad at them. Receivables continue to be high - they still have a substantial number of days outstanding. Many of the board customers have been struggling recently and I hope that the receivables remain collectable. OEM announcements will be coming in a few weeks (where have we heard that before?) System integrators will be 1/3 of Banshee sales. The latest Forbes issue has a great article on system integrators. This may mean that IBM/Compaq/HP will be adding Banshee as an approved addition. Ingrams, Micro Trend, Solectron, and others build systems for them and they also build their own "white boxes". Retail sales are picking up (and they're using an outside service to monitor this). Voodoo2 is number one except where Banshee is #1, then V2 is #2. Branding and relations with game designers was stressed. As soon as I post this, I'm going to fire up my brand new, never before tried copy of Independence War. The game is Glide only (software rendering is the only other option) and has been getting rave reviews. Michael