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Strategies & Market Trends : Three Amigos Stock Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JDRogers who wrote (12756)	1/16/1999 8:13:00 PM
From: Sergio H	Respond to of 29382

<TA on VIAS> JD, It's not an easy task to evaluate VIAS on a TA basis as the price and volume have been relatively flat for the last four months. The FA raises questions. Co. and insiders have been buying shares in an effort to build up the stock but earnings are projected to be lower for fiscal 99 than for fiscal 98 as Co. switches focus to other software products. VIAS is selling at just over book value and has no debt. Not much risk here, but upside is dependent on interest picking up in Y2K sector enough to create a rally and perhaps the co. can come in with an earnings surprise when they report later this month. The following article describes the problem that Y2K Companies are currently facing. January 13, 1999 Y2K's Worldwide Financial Impact International Data Corporation's Research Director Thomas D. Oleson and Director Luisa Bordoni recently announced an updated study on the true expenses associated with the Y2K problem. The company, known for splashy research in the high-tech field, has been tracking Year 2000 expenses since a 1996 research study of 500 U.S. executives. A new study updating that 1996 survey with an exhaustive 12,000-company survey of American and foreign concerns increases the total 6.1 percent, to total American Y2K spending of $121.96 billion from 1995 through 2001. The survey puts over half of that, $66.30 billion, down to "external spending," including services, hardware and software. And contrary to the common perception that Y2K is siphoning off the I.T. department's funding, the $121.96 billion Y2K estimate, IDC says, "represents only 2.6 percent of total I.T. spending in the United States over the six-year period." When's the best time to be a Y2K professional? You missed it. Spending on Y2K projects in the United States was projected to peak in 1998, according to the study, declining in 1999 -- when Y2K expenses will be even lower than in 1997. The study does not address non-I.T. expenses, such as legal fees or chips embedded in non-I.T. equipment. The study compiled data from IDC's 12,000 interviews with people at small, medium-sized and large businesses worldwide. Respondents to the survey represent 80 percent of all technology spending in the world -- which leads to a margin of error of plus or minus five percent. Worldwide 1998 spending is expected to peak this year as well. Overall expenditures from 1995 through 2001 are tagged at $296.74 billion, which again is less than three percent of worldwide I.T. spending. The study concludes that the millennium bomb isn't a gold mine for hardware and software vendors, as it's provided only relatively minor increases in revenue. The winners, the study points out, are enterprise services packaged application vendors, which have grown dramatically -- but not due solely to Y2K. Naturally services firms have fared well, but the study finds that "even they are experiencing reductions in demand for older, traditional services such as systems integration and business process reengineering." IDC concludes that companies faced with a Year 2000 problem try to tackle it at minimum cost: "Companies have shifted priorities and managed to reduce spending or defer projects in other areas, increasing the total I.T. budget by about a 14 percent compound annual growth rate in the past three years." Also, the study finds, firms have in general not increased their I.T. operating budgets enough to allow their I.T. organizations to continue spending at pre-Y2K levels for other projects. So your I.T. department probably does have something legitimate to grouse about.