For any and all GMGC Longs:
I have been following this thread for a long time, and have come to respect and appreciate the discussion that goes on here. Wanted to post this here as I have already done on the General Magic thread. This article comes from www.stockrumors.com and I think it is worth reading if you follow this company. I for one feel that it may be nearing a breakout. The market makers are absolutely ruthless with this stock, but it has potential to really move on good news which seems like it could be right around the corner. Stock has had a harsh week, so now could be a good SAM opportunity. Of course please do your own DD. Here is the article:
Do You Believe In Magic ?
February 19, 1999
Imagine for a moment that you are the owner of a small but
growing business. You have become a jack-of-all-trades, juggling
a frenetic mobile schedule while still needing to be in constant
contact with clients, vendors, employees, business contacts, and,
of course, your family. You have meetings and road shows to
attend, but you don't want to miss that important call from your son
or your best customer. You have email and faxes to read, email
and faxes to send, but you're not in the office. You need HELP!
It's readily apparent that you need an assistant--but you need an
assistant that can be available to you at all hours of the day and
night, and weekends, too--and that assistant would need to know
who you wish to speak to, and respond to each call according to
your wishes--oh and, by the way, it would be great if your assistant
could look up a vendor's number in the address book you neglected
to take on your trip, and simultaneously make a meeting change in
your calendar from next Tuesday to Wednesday. It is, however,
quite obvious that you can't afford an assistant as helpful and
available as the one we just described, and even if you could, does
such a person even exist?
But wait. What if we were to tell you that, for as little as $18 a
month, you can employ the services of a personal digital "virtual
assistant" that can handle all the tasks you need done, and more!
The Portico service is the flagship product of General Magic, Inc.
(Nasdaq: GMGC) of Sunnyvale, CA, and it promises to
revolutionize the way we communicate, access information, and
schedule our busy days by integrating the telephone, the computer,
and the Internet, and all in a powerful but easy-to-use system.
Utilizing its patented, proprietary text-to-speech technology called
magicTalk (tm), and from any phone anywhere, Portico can: read
voice mail messages to you in a pleasant voice read your email
messages, and if you wish to see those emails on paper, you can
tell it to fax it to you, or even fax it to another party. If you wish to
respond to your email, you can record your voice response, and
Portico will forward it to the original sender as a .wav file which
they can then hear using RealAudio. read you your schedule, and
you can tell it to schedule new appointments or reschedule
previously made appointments for you, access and change contact
names, addresses, and phone numbers in your information manager
keep you abreast of important news, and stock quotes and
information (for example, it will call you if the prices of your
favorite stocks change substantially during the day!) And all this
can be done by your natural language voice commands and without
touching your phone keypad! Additionally, all these features can be
accessed by using your web browser, and it can interface your
address book and calendar with your Palm Pilot and
MS Outlook.
We could review the many additional features of the Portico
virtual assistant, bu we know how busy our members are. If you
want to find out more about General Magic Inc. and their products,
you may visit their web site at
www.generalmagic.com.
The reader must be aware that this editorial is not an
advertisement for Portico or General Magic. Although we have not
actually tested the product as a subscriber, we have interacted with
the system, and it seems to handle calls and commands with
accuracy, is helpful in its options, and speaks to you in natural
language patterns rather than having you use more artificial or
system-specific voice commands as do some other subscriber
systems.
Market Presence and Growth:
The "soul" of the Portico system is its magicTalk (tm) voice user
interface, and General Magic has been working with other
companies to increase magicTalk's market uses. In November
1998, General Magic announced an exclusive agreement with
Intuit, Inc. (Nasdaq: INTU) whereby Intuit's Quicken.com will use
the magicTalk (tm) interface to allow millions of Quicken.com
users to have voice command access to financial information. This
service will be implemented in early 1999, according to a
company press release. General Magic's goal isto establish the
magicTalk platform as "the de facto standard for voice access to
the Internet." General Magic has partnered with Microsoft Corp. to
combine their Portico virtual assistant service with Microsoft's
Windows CE-powered Auto PC platform to access Internet
information in automobiles. This service would enable drivers to
ask for complex information (such as directions to a specific
address) in a natural speaking voice. The information would be
retrieved from the Internet, and then displayed onscreen in the car.
A prototype of this was demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics
Show in Las Vegas on January 7, 1999. Launch dates for this
service is not known at this time. Microsoft, by the way, has an
11% minority interestin General Magic. Over the past couple of
months both Lucent and Microsoft have been rumored to be
looking at General Magic. According to Buck Krawczyk, Director
of Corporate Communications for General Magic, General Magic
has their own substantial network operations center, and their
revenues will be generated via the utilization of this center, no
matter what associated product or service is using their network.
They are working on additional products to utilize the
magicTalk(tm) interface, and it stands to reason that as uses grow,
revenues will expand, and their network operation spending will
become more efficient.
Competition: There are rival services available, but Portico seems
to be the only system that integrates your voice, voice mail, email,
organizer address book and calendar,and the Internet, and do it in a
natural (well, human) way. When asked about future competition,
Mr. Krawczyk noted that firms such as Motorola and Lucent have
considered the development of such a system, but nothing has been
presented to the market as of yet.
Financially Speaking:
The 1998 fiscal year results of General Magic will not be released
until March 10, 1999. This fact, however, may actually present a
good opportunity for our Stockrumors.com family to "get in while
the gettin's good!" 1998 was not General Magic's first year of
operation; however, it is the first year of marketing for the Portico
service, (The service was offered in a limited manner in July of
1998 and has been growing since then.) Therefore, past results
may not be useful as anindicator of future value. Let's face it, like
so many emerging-technology stocks, the past (and often present)
financial stats may not mean anything. Investors either keenly
perceive future value, or see a fast-moving technology train, and
(rightly or wrongly) hop on board for fear of missing yet another
opportunity to profit. According to Mr. Krawczyk, the subscriber
base began to grow during the 4th Qtr. of 1998, and so this revenue
is not reflected in the 9/30/98 figures shown below.
Anyway, here are some selected stats:
Closing price (2/17/99) 4 5/8
52 week High (5/6/98) 15.44
52 week Low (2/10/98)1.38
Shares outstanding (millions) 30.3
Earnings / Share (9 mos. ended 9/30/98) -1.58
Sales (9 mos. ended 9/30/98) 2.2M
Market Capitalization 169M
Cash & equivalents at 9/30/98 46.8M
Current/Non-current debt at 9/30/98 5.3M
Bloomberg Personal Finance magazine has decided to choose
General Magic for the number 40 spot in its "100 Hot Stocks for
1999". Now it's time for you to decide.
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