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Gold/Mining/Energy : Jetform-FORM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMP who wrote (349)	10/26/1998 1:41:00 PM
From: John Freeman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 530

Thanks for posting this. Tried to buy some last Friday at 21.75, am glad it didn't go through. It would have been nice to have had your post last Thursday, as The Center's report was dated Oct.19. (Have since looked them up) Sunday I then reassesed my thinking and expect to see share price going down further possibly to around 17.00. Approx. half of 52 week high. Shorts will make money for awhile on this one later John

To: RMP who wrote (349)	10/27/1998 12:32:00 PM
From: Midas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 530

This seems to be a mixture of unfair and fair comment. As regards recognizing consulting revenue only when it is billed, for any long term contract which is billable on completion, you have to account for work in progress somehow. To not do so would certainly distort the accounts because you would have the costs but no matching sales revenue if you didn't include the revenue until it was billed, and as Jeff McMullen apparently said, legally you probably have to do it. As regards the term receivables from software licensing, I agree their approach is not particular conservative.However I don't believe it has changed over time - they always have been sloppy in that regard. The recent increase in long-term accounts receivable may simply be because of the size of recent deals, and may not represent any change in policy. The treatment of "sold" receivables doesn't seem particularly unusual or worrying. But the excessive "write off of in process r&d" following the delrina forms acquistion from Symantec may be fair comment. In summary, a useful analysis, but a lot of software companies are just as cavalier in their accounting. I don't think there is a great deal to worry about here, and most of it was pretty obvious from their published accounts so it isn't new news.