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Non-Tech : Gentex (GNTX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Brophy who wrote (159)	2/16/1999 7:40:00 PM
From: Donald carlson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196

Mark, I believe Gentex fully recognized DON as it's largest competitor, but, DON appears to me to have some real impediments to rapid growth and talking market share from Gentex. 1. Where are they going to get the capital? DON is a low margin operation with a gross margin less than Gentex's net margin (last quarter NM of 0.5%), near zero cash flow , and debt to equity>1. 2. Getting into high volume production is capital intensive. 3. My sense of Gentex strategy is to retain the high margin, higher tech mirrors with DON picking up the lower margin mirrors. I would expect DON may take some of the 90% share from Gentex but the mirror market has about 7% auto penetration looks like it will grow faster than Gentex will lose market share to DON. It's also very expensive to take share away from a leader like Gentex if they don't cooperate. I don't think DON has the $$$. regards, dgc

To: Mark Brophy who wrote (159)	2/17/1999 5:15:00 PM
From: Turs	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196

Mark - can you even interpret a balance sheet? These two companies aren't even in the same sport, let alone the same league. The numbers speak for themselves. Re: competition, DON has always been there, for years.....and years. And they still own a single-digit percentage of the market. Why? Because their technology is expensive and unstable. And because the company is a poor decision maker, capital allocator, etc. Yeah, why did they sell a firm that has now allowed GNTX to reduce its costs FASTER than it is having to give up price to the automakers? Doesn't sound too bright to me!