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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: .com who wrote (36845)	10/21/1998 3:22:00 PM
From: DiViT	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

ESS has a Market Cap of $121.9 million and Cube has $196.8 million in cash as of June 30, 1998. I can't see any reason for Cube to buy ESS other than to get at the Shinco business. The Audio business is not worth it, neither is the Modem business. Cube can do SVCD, and I haven't heard of any significant ESST DVD wins. So let's think about Shinco. If you give Shinco 30% market share (which I think is more likely at 15% at best), then you're talking about buying back 30% market share in a market that will contribute something like 30% to Cube's revenues. 30% of 30% is 9% of revenue? (or at 15% of 30% is 4.5% of revenue?) So talking in grossly round numbers, and assuming revenues at 90mm per Q let's assume 360mm for the year. 360mm * 30% = 108mm in VCD revenues 108mm * 9% = 9.72mm (or 108mm * 4.5% = 4.86mm) Is that it? Nah, I take that back. I don't see how even Shinco is worth it.

To: .com who wrote (36845)	10/21/1998 4:32:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

People just love TV.......................................... www2.nando.net Laotians love their satellite dishes Copyright © 1998 Nando.net Copyright © 1998 Reuters News Service VIENTIANE, Laos (October 20, 1998 11:08 a.m. EDT nandotimes.com) - For a growing number of Laotians, free time is being spent gathered around the television watching soap operas beamed from neighboring Thailand into space and then to Laotian homes. Fueled by imports of cheap satellite dishes and the public's insatiable desire to keep up with weekly installments of Thai dramas, the dish, that symbol of the information age, is a common sight in this once isolated and still impoverished Southeast Asian nation. The 6-foot dishes are not only in the cities, they are now found in even the most remote villages. "Just in the past year they're popping up in places I would have never expected," said an American aid worker. "All they need is $200 and a power source." A unique set of geographical and cultural factors are taking sparsely populated, landlocked Laos into the world of mass media. At the heart of the boom is the quality of Thai television and the similarity of the Thai and Lao languages, which are widely understood in both countries. Laos's two state-run television stations do not have the resources to produce the slick soap operas and flashy television shows Laotians hunger to see, local viewers said. "People want to watch many channels," said Vongphaehan Luanglath, an electronics salesman in Vientiane's Morning Market. "If I didn't have a dish at my house I could only get one Thai channel." Rugged Lao terrain makes dishes imperative Viewers along the Thai border and in the lowlands can pick up a maximum of three Thai channels, Vongphaehan said, but with a dish they can receive five. Seventy-five percent of Laos is mountainous and the high, craggy ranges block out TV reception with regular antennas. Despite the economic slowdown and sharp dip in the value of the Laotian kip, vendors in the market said sales are steady. The kip has dropped to 4,190 per dollar from 3,500 in June. Most vendors sell about five dishes and receiver sets a week -- not many by the standards of other consumer societies but significant in a country where poverty is abject, especially in rural areas. The dishes are manufactured in China and reimported through Thailand. Inexpensive receivers come from China and higher-end models from Korea, vendors said. Low-power receivers can be bought for as little as $200 but some cost as much as $1,200. "There's no way a subsistence farmer living in the mountains can afford one of these," said the aid worker. "It's mostly the merchants and village chiefs (in rural areas)." The dishes have become a status symbol in remote villages, where they sometimes are placed in front of homes made from only a few dollars worth of timber, he added. Thai shows most popular on satellite TV While viewers can receive up to 60 channels, the vast majority watch only Thai shows rather than CNN or StarTV because of the language barrier. The one notable exception is the Singapore version of MTV. Younger Laotians such as Sone, Sengkham's 22-year-old daughter, said they tuned into the music video channel for a steady diet of such groups as the Spice Girls. "I tell my children only to watch good programs," said Sengkham as a Thai rock band blared on his TV set. Laotian government officials have expressed concern about the cultural invasion from their more populous neighbor to the west. But most agree that they have given up the fight. Unlike communist Laos' stricter neighbors, Vietnam and Myanmar, dish technology is unregulated and users do not need a license. Khamkhong Kongvongsa, a spokesman for the Ministry of Information and Culture's Mass Media Department, said Laos has to take the bad with the good in Thai television. He decried the violence, including frequent murders, in Thai dramas. "Every day you see people killing each other so easily on Thai TV shows. In Laos, we only have about 10 murder cases a year," he said. But he said Laotians are not only watching dramas but news shows as well. "Our mass media doesn't do a very good job of covering international news or making documentaries," he said. "There's no way we would know very much about things like Clinton and Monica Lewinsky if it weren't for Thai TV." By STEW MAGNUSON, Reuters