Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Ampex Corporation (AEXCA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: flickerful who wrote (3783)	11/10/1998 12:14:00 AM
From: Ed Perry	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17679

<<some very big and very rich companies>> The surprise is, for those who have not read G Moore's "Gorilla Game", the first horse out of the gate grabs kudos and then has the least capital requirements. If Ampex had not aligned with Imagio, they would not have stood a chance. Another hit or miss with a narrow focus product or invention. I think that the KM initiative had a lot of home-grown narrow focus qualities. While R&D is crucial and a rational product line is necessary, in today's high tech world of shifting alliances and always changing partnering, concerted marketing and strategic market positioning is required for survival. The comment immediately above about tax loss selling is telling. Such sale is logical and advisable, given the circumstances. What will be more telling however, over the next only six weeks maximum, will be the response to the last of the tax loss sellers. Will the specialist and locals accumulate? The indication is so far that they will. If there is another market break in these six weeks then there will be more information available. What I am looking for is clues as to who is holding the shares. If the shares are in strong hands, then the decline has run its course and at worst, we can expect a false shakeout. Despite all the gloom present, I still look at the charts and the daily and weekly look great since September. It's not the $1.00 strictly speaking , but the pattern in which the $1.00 appears. Specifically, we seem to be in the tail end of a slow two year decline with a baseing area of a bit over a year measuring from late Oct. 97. Both the slow decline and the basing patterns are consistent with an internally generated turnaround. On the business front, the right strategic moves seem be falling into place. This should render these chart patterns to have their predictive power. While I can speculate and muse, I must admit that I cannot know much about what is going on inside this company. I consider there notions to be mental gymnastics in which I can narrow my focus to a more finite range of choices. This helps me to understand the investment better and thereby form better decisions about it. To conclude, some quotes from the current issue of Computer Reseller (Nov 9 98, p 278 "Disk drive player SyQuest suspends most operations"): Regarding the Oct 28 default on its line of credit: "What really happened is that the bank clamped down on the line of credit it was offering the company," said a source inside SyQuest. "And basically a company of our size just needed a certain amount of money for working capital, and they weren't allowing us that flexability." and ... "The company's crisis follows a number of missteps that brought the pioneer of high-capacity removable cartridge drives to the brink of ruin.." ... products lost momentum as new competitors emerged ... The market is not as big as they thought it would be ... They spent too much on facilities and promotions ... [SyQuest] did not have breadth of product ... nor did they leverage their distribution channel and their OEM relationships..." Hopefully, Ampex's borrowed funds leverage, their expansion with MiroNet and their Imagio linkage will prevent a similar fate from befalling Ampex. Ed Perry Ed Perry