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To: Roads End who wrote (44625)	1/21/1999 11:14:00 PM
From: Elwood P. Dowd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

Gateway's outlook for 1999............................................ ................... Thursday January 21, 8:18 pm Eastern Time ....... INTERVIEW-Gateway president backs analyst views By David Brinkerhoff NEW YORK, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Gateway Inc. (NYSE:GTW - news) President and Chief Operating Officer Jeff Weitzen said on Thursday he was comfortable with first quarter and full year earnings estimates for the personal computer direct marketer. Earnings estimates for the first quarter of 1999 were 59 cents a share, while full year estimates were $2.76 a share, according to First Call, which tracks such figures. ''We are comfortable with those numbers,'' Weitzen told Reuters in an interview. Weitzen also announced that Gateway's board of directors had authorized a common share buyback program of up to to $200 million for 1999, set to begin in the first quarter. The interview followed Gateway's earning's announcement earlier Thursday. Gateway said it sold a record 1,151,000 personal computers in the 1998 fourth quarter, up 35 percent from the same period a year ago. Sales rose 17 percent from the year ago period to a record $2.31 billion, while earnings rose 37 percent from a year ago to a record $129 million or 81 cents per diluted share. With consumer demand driven higher by Internet use, Weitzen said Gateway expected both first-time buying and replacement buying of personal computers to boost the company's growth in unit shipments for 1999 to over 15 percent, the number forecast for the overall industry. ''The market will grow in the mid-teens and Gateway will probably grow faster than that,'' Weitzen told Reuters.