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.

Technology Stocks : PSFT - Fiscal 1998 - Discussion for the next year -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SDNA who wrote (4430)	1/29/1999 9:23:00 AM
From: KM	Respond to of 4509

These downgrades and spike downs usually mark the bottom. There ought to be some bargain hunting going on good for a bounce if anyone wants out.

To: SDNA who wrote (4430)	1/29/1999 9:30:00 AM
From: Tom_	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4509

San Jose Mercury News Article, 1/29. PEOPLESOFT By Adam Lashinsky Mercury News Staff Writer Winners can be arrogant. Losers are forced to grovel. Take PeopleSoft Inc. (Nasdaq, PSFT) whose arrogance, applauded in this space, was the high-minded notion that a public company shouldn't hold wink-wink- nudge-nudge conference calls with investors because such sessions are unfair to the investing masses. That was fine when PeopleSoft's earnings, employment count and stock price moved rapidly up and to the right. But once the Pleasanton- based software company's fortunes began to sour last year -- the result of market saturation for its big-business-oriented software and a diversion of corporate spending to fix the millennium bug -- PeopleSoft changed its tune. Last September, First, PeopleSoft held an extraordinary conference call to reassure nervous institutional investors. Thursday, it threw in the towel completely, hosting a plain-vanilla teleconference to announce a plain-vanilla lousy quarter. Just like other companies do. The news is grim. PeopleSoft, whose year-over-year growth rates have been in the 60 percent range for several years, reported fourth- quarter license revenue growth of only 3 percent. The unabashedly people-oriented company announced its first-ever layoffs, laying off 430 employees, or 6 percent of its overall workforce. And it disclosed that it is among the many technology companies whose merger-related accounting practices are being reviewed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. As a result, PeopleSoft may have to re-state results for 1996, 1997 or 1998. PeopleSoft also said its visibility -- the degree to which it can forecast its business -- is poor for the second half of 1999, when it plans to unleash a slew of new Internet-related products. But it's counting on those products to achieve overall revenue growth of between 20 percent and 30 percent for 1999. ''It remains to be seen if that's going to be enough to help this year,'' says Rick G. Sherlund, software analyst for Goldman, Sachs & Co. in New York. He notes that PeopleSoft finds itself in good company, as its major competitors have been reporting similar problems. Says Sherlund, ''It probably gets worse before it gets better.'' Tom