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.

Strategies & Market Trends : Waiting for the big Kahuna -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (35072)	12/9/1998 1:54:00 AM
From: HammerHead	Respond to of 94695

New Y2K Study On Dr. Ed's EcoNet In my latest Y2K REPORTER (http://www.yardeni.com/y2kreporter.html), I examine corporate progress by studying Y2K budget data available in some of the third quarter SEC filings. I found 315 of the 415 S&P 500 companies currently showing a third quarter report on the SEC's Edgar database, which reported the total estimated cost of the Y2K project and also how much has been spent so far. I believe that there must be a good direct correlation between the percentage of budget spent and progress in Y2K remediation. If this assumption is correct, then many companies have a great deal of work to do in a very short period of time before the Y2K “dreadline.” Indeed, all told, the companies in my sample collectively have spent only 42% of their budgets as of the end of the third quarter. Here are some of my other findings: 1) On average, the S&P 500 industry that is at the top of the spending-to-budget progress list is the financial sector, with a ratio of 53.3%. It is followed by capital goods (45.6%), health care (42.2%), consumer cyclicals (41.8%), consumer staples (41.5%), transports (40.0%), energy (39.9%), technology (36.9%), basic materials (36.0%), communications (35.3%), and utilities (31.4%). Utilities are at the bottom of the list of S&P industry sectors! If they don't work, nothing else will. 2) No industry is uniformly ahead of the others. There are laggards in every major industry. Even in the leading financial sector, 36% of the sample has spent less than half of their Y2K budget through the third quarter of 1998. 3) There are a disturbing number of laggards. Fully 33% of the companies I surveyed spent less than one-third of their budgets so far. And 14% of the companies spent less than 20% of their projected Y2K budget through the third quarter of 1998. 4) Only 8 companies claim that they are nearly finished, having spending-to-budget ratios of 80% or more. 5) In the utility sector, only five of the 34 companies in my survey claim to have spent more than 50% of their budget. And 10 of these have spent less than 20%! Dr. Ed