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Technology Stocks : Safeguard Scientifics SFE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: michael r potter who wrote (1881)	10/23/1998 7:59:00 PM
From: John Arnopp	Respond to of 4467

Mike, I feel your pain. When I first invested in SFE (in mid-1996) there were those on this board that didn't really believe in the spin-off strategy. There was a person - I forget who - that said he gave his rights away because they weren't worth the bother to him. He was in it for Safeguard itself. Others agreed that Safeguard had often done better than it's offerings. Looking at CATP and some others back then, it still seemed like the bet was on Safeguard + rights offerings. Even though since we've had OAOT, DOCC, CVSN (and I really liked CVSN and OAOT), we've also had SCAI and DTPI. I was even more bullish when they announced 3 offerings per year (who cares at that point what SFE does, as long as you get the big "dividend"?). But, with no offering in sight (sell signal) and a huge premium (short signal), there's not much that can justify holding in the near term. Why sell at 25 and not 40? Because we didn't know at 35 - or didn't want to believe what should have been apparent. Although, I disagree and while I realize Safeguard needs to be responsible to the companies it takes public, they also have a shareholder base that values these offerings. Perhaps they could have done a smaller offering, issued less stock, changed the ratio, or even issued options on a future offering (like we were, well, investors or something)! We will look back in a couple years and say, "wow" and be glad we're back in Safeguard, and hopefully be glad we got out now...Just remember to get back in! Thanks again for your thoughtful posts, Mike. Good luck to all, --John