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Technology Stocks : PSFT - Fiscal 1998 - Discussion for the next year -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (3163)	10/22/1998 1:12:00 PM
From: David W. Ricker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4509

I too have lost faith. Looking for a place to exit.

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (3163)	10/22/1998 1:46:00 PM
From: Melissa McAuliffe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4509

Chuzz, Though that cc didn't resemble the true reality, I don't think any of PSFT management on that call either lied or tried to deceive anyone. I think that what has happened here is that when PSFT was in hypergrowth mode it was always easy to make the numbers and growth was almost guaranteed unless they did something to screw up bigtime. I'm not excusing them because they should have seen this coming and had the necessary controls/forecasting capabilities, etc. It seems as if they either didn't or just weren't getting accurate information. But whatever the reason... it isn't good. If I were an analyst (perish the thought) and had access to management I think that I would try to find out how this could have happened...Not that growth can slow significantly but how they couldn't see it coming. There isi some reason for this. I can only offer this speculation... The people at the top are getting their information from the field. They don't just make this stuff up. Maybe some of their sales management doesn't know how to forecast. Or maybe they are just used to forecasting and then always exceeding their forecast (very likely,btw). There are ALOT of sales managers in the world who don't ever want to share anything but positives because sales managers are supposed to be positive. I know that sounds stupid but it happens. That's a problem only when the results don't appear. Or maybe they weren't expecting the SAP price cutting. Though the SAP price cutting this quarter certainly wouldn't cause future growth projections to drop so much so quickly. Regardless of how or why it happened, they need to get a handle on their business. I guess I'm only trying to make the point that I don't believe any of this was done/said w/the intent to deceive. It doesn't make it better but I think it will be a lot better in the long run than if management becomes perceived as intentionally deceptive. M