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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DJBEINO who wrote (24514)	11/25/1998 12:15:00 AM
From: ToySoldier	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

Another GLOWING report from PC-Week. Novell recovery continues with impressive Q4 earnings By Larry Barrett, ZDII November 24, 1998 5:14 PM ET Novell Inc.'s remarkable turnaround continued Tuesday when the network software developer easily topped Wall Street estimates in its fourth fiscal quarter, returning a profit of $42 million, or 12 cents a share, on sales of $298 million. First Call consensus pegged the Provo, Utah, company for earnings of 9 cents a share in the quarter. Novell (NOVL) shares closed off 5/8 to 17 3/8 ahead of the earnings report. "Our strategy is clearly working," said chief executive Eric Schmidt in a release. "Initial customer response to NetWare 5 and new Novell partnerships demonstrate that the market increasingly recognizes that [the] directory is vital to managing information resources in an Internet world." Once written off for dead by both the technology and investment communities, Novell has battled back to regain profitability after losing the bulk of its customer base to Microsoft Corp. Repositioned as a company more interested in expanding the desktop to the Internet, Novell is suddenly a hot commodity on Wall Street. On Monday, the stock surged to a 52-week high of 18 after falling to a low of 6 13/16 in January. Four of the seven institutional investment firms following the stock maintain either a "buy" or "strong buy" recommendation. The $289 million in sales represents an 11 percent improvement against the year-ago period when it squeaked out a profit of $7.2 million, or 2 cents a share, on sales of $269 million. In the fiscal year, Novell earned $102 million, or 29 cents a share, on sales of $1.08 billion, compared to a loss of $78 million, or 22 cents a share, on sales of $1 billion in fiscal 1997. Sales from directory-enabled servers, consisting of NetWare 4.0 and NetWare 5.0, totaled $150 million, a 16 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 1997. Associated network infrastructure and application software contributed $83 million, up 30 percent from the year-ago quarter. In the quarter, sales from customer service, network training and consulting for network solutions totaled $37 million, a 22 percent increase from the year-earlier period. Last quarter, Novell earned $26.5 million, or 7 cents a share, on sales of $272 million. Toy