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Technology Stocks : Phoenix Technologies (PTEC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Brophy who wrote (2925)	11/23/1998 9:36:00 PM
From: Tim Oliver	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3624

Mark,what makes you so sure PTEC is grossly undervalued? Do you think that it is more or less undervalued than EBAY? Please try to be objective and rational in your response. :-)

To: Mark Brophy who wrote (2925)	11/23/1998 11:25:00 PM
From: John B. Dillon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3624

Mark, Again some great points, especially your position on shareholder equity and the IP group. I'm learning a lot from this thread and I now understand why the analyst do not follow this company. It is a lot easier to BS people into believing that companies without earnings are the next Microsoft or Dell. I was originally attracted to PTEC because of their market share and I expected they would leverage sales with their Intel relationship and added value products like RomPilot. RomPilot in particular interested me because I believe the very low cost approach to this problem has enormous potential and will help PTEC lock in their customers. Someone in a post a number of weeks ago pointed out that once one major OEM has it the others will follow. I like this strategy and all of these issues makes the cost of entry higher. I thought the IP group had tons of potential, but felt that it would become a commodity extremely fast. I felt that the PICO group was somewhat in the middle. I expect the cost of entry to these groups is relatively small. I will keep my shares because I believe BIOS prices should stabilize and with ROMPilot and IBM coming on line, a promise of decreased R&D costs and Jack and Bob with a nice chunk of stock at 9 they will make or beat the numbers and the stock will start to edge up. After the wait limit PTEC will have to buy back shares to move the stock price, because if they do not the good employees will leave. Once the buy back takes place our friends like FF will jump on board and then the momentum players will swing the stock a little higher. The only other sign I would like to see is additional insiders buying. Sounds great, but boy is it painful to see companies with a very low cost of entry and no profits go to the stratosphere while we sit dead in the water. jd

To: Mark Brophy who wrote (2925)	11/24/1998 12:30:00 AM
From: Jules B. Garfunkel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3624

Mark, As a fundamental analyst, I also thought that shareholder's equity per share, measured at two points, two years apart, was a good way to measure a companies progress, or lack thereof. I saw two years ago, owing to IBM's stock buy-back program, that the company's shareholder's equity was decreasing. In fact it had decreased more than 20% in recent years. I therefore believed IBM was a good short. However, today I finally gave up and covered all but a few of my naked IBM Calls. During the last two years, while shareholder's equity dropped, I watched IBM's stock price double over the same period. So when you show that PTEC has kept shareholder's equity relatively flat, while their stock price has been cut some 60%, it has me more than confused. Is there any logic or justice to investing these days? Thank G-d for my INTC and ALTR and the fact that you wouldn't let me enter IBM as a short in the stock picking contest. (g) Regards, Jules