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

To: dennis michael patterson who wrote (79387)	11/13/1998 10:45:00 AM
From: Thomas G. Busillo	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 176388

Dennis, Eric Moskowitz exceeded my "whisper number". I thought his DELL earnings wrap-up would rate an 82 in terms of how blatantly he would manage to turn a news report about DELL into another episode of the continuing spectacle of fawning hackery known as "Eric Loves Ashok". But the guy just blew away the numbers. 167.5! He more than doubled the AKE ("ass-kiss estimate") - a +104% upside surprise! Unbelievable! Dell's conference call was off-limits to the press -- and to Piper Jaffray's Ashok Kumar. "They kicked me off the call, so I had to have someone teleconference me in," Kumar told TheStreet.com. Great start. Presents Kumar as a "martyr for truth". (+15 pts.) [I'd be curious to know how Eric proceeded with his fact-checking on Kumar's claim.] Kumar is looking mighty smart, however, for bucking the Street's lockstep wisdom this week that the nation's leading PC direct seller would continue to put up booming growth numbers one perfect quarter after another. While Dell's earnings result -- 28 cents per share... Failing to mention that .28 was Kumar's estimate (+10 pts.) Ignoring any mention of his revenue estimates (+10 pts.) Ignoring any mention of his ASP estimates (+10 pts.) Ignoring his hypothesis re: DELL trailing the industry in the 3rd Q (+30 pts.) The "first, original and official" online whisper numbers site -- whispernumber.com -- had 34 cents. Good use of a questionable source to butress your point (+7 1/2 pts.). It seems as if investors caught wind of something Thursday, sending the stock down almost three points by the close... "Naive waifing" - a little too obvious (-10 pts.) [Um, let's see, could it have been the CNBC appearance? Your own article Eric? The way a lot of media outlets seemed to be quoting the exact same phrases from the exact same report from the same person - Kumar? Gee, Eric, why do you think this is a) because so he's brilliant everyone just has to quote him OR b) because he's conscious of the "news cycle", knows many outlets are going to be running the obligatory "DELL earnings preview", knows how lazy and uncritical guys like you are, and they "miraculously" just happened to have that report went they went to write their articles?] and another three points afterward -- 8% for the day. That's not exactly an earnings celebration. You could have hidden the schadenfreude a little better there Eric, but I like the impression the "8% for the day" makes and equating trading on Instinet (possibly before the conf. call) with market-hours trading (+3 pts.) Before Dell fans do anything drastic, they should realize that the company reported a great quarter -- it just wasn't perfect. Thumbs up to thestreet.com's editors for allowing its reporter to freely engage in opinion and conjecture in a news piece (+10 pts. for Eric and an additional +15 BONUS pts. for breaking one of the cardinal rules of journalism) But for Kumar, who stubbornly maintains his strong buy rating on Dell, Brilliant brush off of a glaring inconsistency with the word "stubbornly" (+25 pts.) "You know it's much easier to critique Dell than to run a company that well -- I think it's still a very good company to invest in for the long term." Excellent. This says "look folks, he's not an arrogant self-promoter. He's really very humble." (+10) (Piper Jaffray has not participated in any of Dell's public offerings.) Implication that the opinions contained are without bias (+15 pts.)... ...no, actually, TSC does that for every piece (subtract those 15 pts.) His theory is that for the last four to six quarters, Dell has had the ideal environment for its model and the "indirects were shooting themselves in the foot." Kumar doesn't pull "research" out of his ass at the last minute; he "theorizes" (+7) "For Dell, unfortunately, declining growth is its new reality," Kumar concludes. "New reality." I love it! Kumar isn't just a guy who knows how to serve his masters through the exploitation of mass communications, he's out there "theorizing" of "new realities". (+15 pts.) All in all, a brilliant evisceration of meaning in the service of impression. Good trading, Tom