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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rudedog who wrote (38792)	12/5/1998 4:56:00 PM
From: Night Writer	Respond to of 97611

rudedog, I agree that spinning Alta Vista off makes no sense long term. I seem to recall some one saying the value of Alta Vista is about one billion dollars. A spin off to share holders as a $5 stock based on that value would be 200,000,000 shares. 1 share of Alta Vista for each 8 shares of CPQ. Alta Vista then has all the overhead of administration currently handled by Compaq. Makes no business sense. NW

To: rudedog who wrote (38792)	12/5/1998 5:19:00 PM
From: Lynn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

Thank you very much for your reply, Rudedog. Quite frankly, until I read the news item I cited with my question, I had not expected CPQ to consider spinning-off AV. My reason was actually a question: Why spin-off AV if it can add to the bottom line? I recognize this is purely hypothetical, but I can not immediately think of any real benefit to CPQ of spinning it off in a IPO [other than getting hold of some cash, which it really does not need _unless_ CPQ has its eye on something BIG--like IBM]. A few years ago I got shares of a spin-off at something like 1 new company share for each 12 mother company shares. If CPQ does the nice-guy thing and spins AV off to its shareholders, I would expect a ratio rather than a 1:1. If they pulled a Santa thing and did a 1:1 I think I'd sell more than half the new shares--then retire. I would be really shocked if CPQ did anything with AV this year. In CPQ as a long term investment, when they do something with AV really does not matter to me as long as spinning it off, no matter to whom, makes sense. BTW, correct me if I'm wrong, but I could sware there used to be something at the top of the AV home page that clearly stated AV was part of Compaq. There is nothing right now other than 'Compaq' to click in the bottom, left corner along with 'help,' 'feedback,' etc. Actually, now that I think of it, it is a good idea to remove an immediate association between CPQ and AV on the home page if there are plans to spin it off down the line. Regards, Lynn

To: rudedog who wrote (38792)	12/5/1998 6:27:00 PM
From: csm	Respond to of 97611

Neither do I understand how an IPO for a portion of AV would benefit shareholders, but based on the PC offer maybe shareholder benefits are not tops on CPQ management's list of considerations. RD, since you know the company so well, how about this? CPQ takes AV, or some portion of it, and bundles it with some other pieces of the company, perhaps acquired from DEC i.e. Millicent. Maybe they could fashion an e-bank of some sort and spin that off. Just food for thought here. Seeing 30+ new posts on a Saturday afternoon, we all need to get a life. Stuart.