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Technology Stocks : Network Associates (NET) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Rancher who wrote (4182)	2/5/1999 7:45:00 PM
From: Charlie Smith	Respond to of 6021

Rancher: Great work! A couple additional questions: 1. When did management release the deferred revenue, other balance sheet and segment (Sniffer) items you quoted for Q4? Was it during the Jan 6 conf. call? URL? 2. Can you elaborate on "Same deal with subsequent acquisitions."? IMO, the street is actually quite pleased with the NETG deal. It's the later ones that have people concerned. Thanks, Charlie

To: The Rancher who wrote (4182)	2/5/1999 8:45:00 PM
From: Chuzzlewit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6021

Rancher, who has accused NETA of cooking the books? The issue, as far as I'm concerned, has little to do with the controversy regarding the accounting for acquired in-process R&D costs; it has to do with a fair accounting of how companies account for themselves following mergers. Unfortunately, the fictions propagated by pooling of interest accounting preclude shareholders from understanding the benefits to them of these mergers -- and this has nothing to do with issues the SEC is questioning. For example, suppose you have an acquiring company with a cash flow per share exchanging 1 of its shares for 2 of an acquired company and that the former has 100MM shares outstanding and the latter has 20MM shares outstanding. After the deal is done the 10-Q will show 140 MM shares outstanding, but will not indicate what the benefit to the shareholder was of issuing those additional 40MM shares because the fiction of pooling of interests treats the companies as if they were always merged! Sure, the merged company grows its total revenues and cash flows, but how has the individual shareholder fared? Where in the accounting is the real return per original share calculated? The sooner we are done with pooling of interest accounting the better. It provides too big a rug under which to sweep financial garbage. TTFN, CTC

To: The Rancher who wrote (4182)	2/25/1999 10:10:00 PM
From: Charlie Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6021

Rancher: This is from theStreet.com. Sounds familiar, eh? Looking at Larson When investors decide whether to put their money into Network Associates (NETA:Nasdaq), they're not just looking at the business. They've got to look at its management, too -- specifically CEO Bill Larson. Larson, who zipped through his presentation at the Robbie Stephens conference, was high energy, as usual. He talked about the wide range of security software that the company now has and bragged about its leadership in several areas of network security including anti-virus scans, firewalls and other "Cybercop" products. But the main draw for some here was Larson, an unabashedly boisterous and aggressive CEO who investors either love or hate. "He's done a great job, there's no doubt about it," said one Bay-area fund manager who nevertheless has stayed away from the stock. Echoing the view of other money managers who asked not to be identified, he called Larson scary. "Come on, would you want to work for him? Can you imagine telling him that something's gone wrong with a project? That's when things go wrong and people try to hide them and hide them until it's too late." Charlie