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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Keith Howells who wrote (77386)	11/9/1998 9:24:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176388

The ambiguous Mr.Kumar- The whole story. Keith: Yes I know about his report that went out to Piper Jaffray's clients and here is my take on it. 1)He already voiced his 'concern' recently about the possibility of a slowdown in the industry next year on account of the Y2K thing.This is public knowledge and people in the know are divided on the issue and still debating it.Acutally I know of no evidence (well that is not saying much I know) to support his contention,on the contrary many are of the opinion that IT spending will increase next year precisely for the same reason he is talking about. 2)According to Kumar's estimate the desktop segment grew 9.6% in Q3 in the U.S but Dell's only grew 7.6% in the same period and in describing this alleged phenomenon (in his report)that is supposed have befallen Dell he said:'They are slowing down','it is alarming' etc. One of his reasonings for the 'slowdown' theory is based on the assumption that DELL's big customers are saturated with Dell machines and they won't spend any more on hardware as they have to spend a lot of their funds on software. It is important to note at this point that the 'market' already knew about this report and obviously shrugged it off.So that is the story on Kumar and now get this. Kumar still rates Dell shares ''strong buy'' because he thinks the company's prospects remain bright for coming years. The question now, he said, is whether the slowdown that his figures show occurred in recent months will persist. Kumar based his estimates on numbers he gathered and on figures from market-research firm International Data Corp. Not everyone agrees with him. Bear Stearns analyst Andrew Neff downplayed the possible dip in unit sales from the second quarter to the third. ''Year-over-year, Dell's growing at four times the market rate,'' said Neff, who rates Dell ''buy.'' U.S. PC shipments rose 14 percent in the third quarter from the year-earlier period, according to IDC. Dell's U.S. shipments jumped 65 percent during the same period. Estimates for overall market sales may be inflated because Dell rivals such as Compaq Computer Corp. cleared out excess inventory in the first half of the year, affecting growth rates in the second and third quarters, Neff said. So there you have it and now draw your own conclusions.