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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jim kelley who wrote (92055)	1/28/1999 12:37:00 AM
From: Chuzzlewit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

Jim, a real look will have to await their 10-K, because I don't know how much they have in depreciation and amortization. Just look at the 3.2BB write-off in purchased R&D this way. Levitt (SEC) wants these write-offs amortized over the life of the project rather than taken up-front. When you take it up-front you get to hide the expense for the remainder of the project and get to pretend it should be ignored for the next n years. Let's suppose that n = 5, in which case we are talking about $160MM per quarter in ignored expense. That's why these little tricks are so near and dear to acquisitive CFOs. You do a merger and then get to write off a stream of future expenses now and claim they are one-time. But as we well know, these are accounting gimmicks. You need to watch cash flow statements to really understand what's going on. TTFN, CTC