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Technology Stocks : DSSI/DATA Systems & Software -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Madharry who wrote (784)	10/29/1998 1:25:00 PM
From: Omer Shvili	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1061

Creditman and Armin, You're right, you all know my opinion of Morgenstern and there is no point in repeating it (especially as we're all shareholders and it probably makes people think twice before buying). Creditman, I thought the Tower numbers were OK and just like we all expected. The CC was full with technical difficulties and I barely heard anything (I'll call Yoav and get my questions answered later). I think Tower is looking good, but like I said 6 months ago, I think Tower is a play for '99 and I don't expect anything special before that. MicroFlash looks great and could turn out to be a real winner - our ace in the hole. Cash flow was OK too, and besides the buy-back and equity investments in Saifun and Virrage, Tower didn't burn too much cash. Q4 will be even better in that sense, and we should stop burning money in '99, so cash levels won't go much lower from here. Armin, I agree that Morgenstern shouldn't have sold Tower for $13 and that it's worth much more. I never said the guy was an idiot, on the contrary, he's a very very smart man. He did probably make a mistake on PHD, and sold it too late, but I didn't say the man was stupid. I'm only afraid that we'll have the same symptoms with Comverge, meaning he'll wait for the right price with a private placement. In start-ups and VC's one can't always wait for the right price. You must keep moving forward, as you don't operate in a vacuum - there are other companies out there who want to succeed just as much as Comverge does. I think we're in a great position to be one of the leaders of meter reading and other utility communication applications and that Comverge's technology is one of the most advanced around (we didn't beat Schlumberger in Venezuela and Thailand for nothing). However, to stay in the lead and take advantage of our current lead, we must make more investments, mainly in marketing. DSSI can't afford to do that on their own, and therefor they need a private placement. Since the situation in the world economy isn't that rosy (and caused a delay in the Venezuela deal), the terms of the private placement DSSI was about to do for Comverge changed. Comverge shouldn't wait until things turn around, they need the cash to keep moving forward. I hope they are not still waiting for better terms, they can't afford to wait too much, they need to capitalize on their advantage over the competition and they need money to o that. I heard Morgenstern is now considering a new deal, which is great. I'll be the first to congratulate such a deal. I just hope its not some BS to keep investors quiet. Armin, I don't think the participants of the thread have enough shares to do anything major. However, we can demand more from our CEO, like cut his salary, focus on a core business (and give the rest as dividend), put more outside board members and not buddies from College, buy some shares directly and not just from stock options and dramatically improve relations with wall-street (who don't really love the guy at this time, not in NY nor in Tel-Aviv). If you can't get a better CEO, make the current CEO improve his performance. Again, I don't hate Morgenstern. I just think he could do a lot more for us shareholders. I don't mind the stock falling (other stocks fell just as hard), but I want better performance on the business side. Omer Omer