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

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (100241)	2/16/1999 12:53:00 PM
From: Gabriel008	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 176387

Michael, DELL has not done as well in the Q4 vs Q3 period as it does in the other periods of the year [relative to market share]. Here is the Q3 vs Q4 worldwide market share comparisons for 3 years; Q3,96...4.7%...Q4,96...4.4% Q3,97...6.2%...Q4,97...6.0 Q3,98...9.1%...Q4,98...8.4% This is a seasonal issue and I, as an investor, certainly take into account this erosion in the Q4 vs Q3 market share. As an investor I also need to deseasonalize this data to determine real performance. I therefore look at DELL's rolling 12 month market shares and PC volume growth for this same kind of corroborating share erosion [see below]. ............World.....growth.....DELL....Growth...Share ..........PC Volume.....%......Volume.....%........%.. Q4, 96.....69324.......n/a......2996......n/a.....4.3 Q1, 97.....72041.......3.9......3381......12.9....4.7 Q2, 97.....74450.......3.3......3732......10.4....5.0 Q3, 97.....77087.......3.5......4157......11.4....5.4 Q4, 97.....80026.......3.8......4707......13.2....5.9 Q1, 98.....81982.......2.4......5330......13.2....6.5 Q2, 98.....83754.......2.2......6123......14.9....7.3 Q3, 98.....86193.......2.9......6901......12.7....8.0 Q4, 98.....89845.......4.2......7721......11.9....8.6 However, I don't see share erosion on a rolling 12 month basis and this leads me to conclude that the Q3 vs Q4 share erosion is more a function of some artificial factor and not DELL's lack of performance. I happen to believe that the root cause of this is that IBM, Compaq and other channel PC players stuff the channel in the pre-xmas period. DELL can't play this game and therefore loses share in the Q4 period. This x-mas channel loading will hurt Q1 results for the channel players and we'll probably see DELL's 12 month rolling share jump to the mid 9% range in the next IDC report. On another front, IDC shows DELL with roughly 2.3 billion units in Q4 [this number takes into account the January period]. BBRS shows 2.2 billion units - a 100,000 unit discrepancy. In my experience with IDC they have been extremely accurate in estimating DELL's quarterly unit volume. However, aside from this 100k discrepancy BBRS totally excluded incremental Data Storage business. IDC, again, estimated that DELL generated $946 million in Data Storage in 1998. Of this number, DELL generated approximately $300 in external Data Storage, a new product segment, in the October through December period. Where's the $300 million in BBRS' report. I can't find it! Baffling! As a result of all this I believe that BBRS is missing close to $500 million in revenue from DELL's Q4. BBRS is expecting $5.2 billion and $0.31 eps and I'm expecting $5.7 billion in sales and $0.34 eps for DELL's latest quarter. Your thoughts would be appreciated.