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

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (4474)	1/30/1999 3:02:00 PM
From: Rick	Respond to of 4509

agreed, an accounting manoevur to offload r&d expenses for not commercially ready products, that would otherwise have to be expensed and hit PSFT earnings. this is the same thing the biotech companies have been doing for years, now adapted to software development. from my perspective, the mmtm thing is alot of noise about nothing. it allows psft to continue to make investments in new product development without having to incurr the investor psychology damage of reduced earnings of PSFT. If everything goes to plan, it will have the impact of allowing PSFT to post higher earnings than would otherwise have been possible. This, of course would be offset by losses in the mmtm unit, but presumably would not punish psft as much as otherwise would occur. the key to the accounting game is that PSFT is not a majority owner of MMTM, and thus does not have to bring losses up to it's own bottom line. there may be some other tax implications, but, in general it seems to me that the MMTM discussion is alot of noise - it is such a small issue compared to simple things like demand for PSFT software products and services. anyway, it's certainly been an interesting year for PSFT. I still believe in the company, it's products, and it's potential to be a long run winner in a growth industry. From a short term perspective, the price action yesterday looked pretty positive to me, closing near it's high of the day. it seems quite possible that all of the bad news is out and we might have something to build on from here. time will tell. rick.