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Technology Stocks : Phoenix Technologies (PTEC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Fred Fahmy who wrote (2856)	10/24/1998 11:18:00 AM
From: Mark Brophy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3624

I'm glad you listed to the call. If the CEO and CFO think the stock is such a bargain, how come PTEC is letting their cash hoard sit idle while the stock languishes?? I think in a previous post you noted that the reason is the 180 waiting period after the Award merger. I'm also frustrated and angry that they aren't inclined to retire stock when they legally have the chance. Award was a good purchase, but they paid a high price. One stop shopping doesn't increase shareholder value as much as massive repurchases. I can't, for the life of me, understand why people continue to defend and support this management. It's hard for me to imagine that a change could be for the worse. Phoenix has better management than SystemSoft and AMI. In a time when just about any trashy unprofitable company can go public, AMI has been unable to sell an IPO. Award has the only management better than Phoenix. Most of the problems at Phoenix are related to the fact that an old code base has little value. I have to believe that someone more qualified could take PTEC's current/future products along with their solid financials, and increase the value of this company. Jack Kay agrees with you and put Laurent Garda of Award in charge of marketing. He also promoted David Frodsham from the Pico acquisition to lead the PC software group. Does PTEC really have virtually 0 leverage in pricing? I find this extremely strange. It isn't strange at all. Netscape and Red Hat Software give away their source code and charge for customization, support, and related products. Similarly, SystemSoft sold their code for $200K because that's all it's worth and the Phoenix code isn't worth a whole lot more. A PC vendor that hires Phoenix to develop a BIOS is paying for an engineering service, not a product. The 10-K stated that BIOS pricing is reduced 15% annually, so the real problem is that Phoenix has been unable to improve engineering productivity as much as Award. I was very happy to hear Jack say that he was tired of under achieving expectations and I think he might be getting the picture that it is prudent to be conservative, especially with global uncertainties continuing…. Management still has a credibility problem but I think I heard signs that they realize this, and therefore the are probably now leaning towards conservative guidance. I'm glad you took the time to listen to the call, because the IR posture seems to be changing. This company has virtually 0 visibility in the investment community. They need to be proactive in stirring up interest including the analysts. The length of the CC Q&A session and the number of questions was very telling. Jack Kay seems to be a good COO and a bad CEO. The CEO should be a salesman who stirs up interest in the stock. Even so, Bob Angelo and Jerry Sanders are the best salesman I've seen, but I'd rather have Jack Kay in charge of Phoenix. Finding somebody with excellent operational and sales skills is difficult. No buyback intentions made public. Leaving any prospective (and current for that matter) investor scratching his head wondering are they waiting for a significantly lower price???...and, therefore, should I wait too? Jack Kay has informed the employees that they'd be buying back stock if it weren't for the 180 day pooling restriction. I'm not optimistic, but I'm waiting a few months. I didn't expect to be pleasantly surprised with the Award and Sand acquisitions, either. I showed in an earlier post that the IP employees are generating $213K and the non-IP employees $141-149K in annual revenues. Employee salaries are probably 50-60% of revenues, so I hope that some increase their salaries and develop their careers by learning Verilog and VHDL. NTU offers 2 video courses (http://web-server.ntu.edu/1/credit/ds765f.htm and web-server.ntu.edu and several seminars. Phoenix should offer it in-house.

To: Fred Fahmy who wrote (2856)	10/24/1998 2:52:00 PM
From: Theo Karantsalis	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3624

Fred wrote: "If the CEO and CFO think the stock is such a bargain, how come PTEC is letting their cash hoard sit idle while the stock languishes?" You got it! Even Michael Dell and Bernie Marcus have announced personal buybacks at questionably "high" prices. Is there that much "risk and uncertainty" at $7.00? Arguably, this is one of the more bearish indicators. One interesting note in Monday, October 26, 1998's IBD is that the accumulation distribution rank is now a "B." Just weeks ago, it was an "E." This means basically that large institutions are selling- on average- more than they are buying. Jules, is there a way to find out who's buying? A "B" is better than an "E," and always better than an "F." ;) Theo