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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill F. who wrote (51554)	3/11/1999 10:22:00 PM
From: gbh	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 132070

Bill, but what about Maffei's bullish comments about the quarter? I know MSFT is somewhat insulated from the price wars of the semis and the box makers, but his indications seem to indicate that units are still very strong. And since Office 97/2000 also seems strong, this would indicate corporate spending is not as bad as indicated on this thread. Office doesn't sell much on the consumer side. Any thoughts? Microsoft Sees Strong Worldwide PC Demand By Martin Wolk 20:43 03-11-99 SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. Chief Financial Officer Greg Maffei said Thursday worldwide demand for personal computers remains strong despite a typical seasonal slowdown in sales. ''We've seen some preannouncements, some rumors of preannouncements, some speculation that the PC business is falling apart,'' Maffei said in a conference call with analysts. ''All evidence that we see suggests that is not true.'' The conference call, which was open to reporters, was called on short notice mainly to discuss how the company would account for the final copies of Office 97 now being shipped to customers with coupons good for a free upgrade to Office 2000. But Maffei also said he wanted to calm concerns expressed by some investors about the overall market for personal computers. ''There is a seasonal slowdown just like every year,'' Maffei said. ''The business is fine. The revenue side is coming in just as we expected and we're quite happy with the progress of this quarter.'' Maffei said Microsoft earnings for the current fiscal third quarter should be in line with expectations despite plans to defer $400 million in revenue for accounting reasons, Maffei said. While the news was seen as neutral, Maffei's bullish comments on the state of the computer market could carry some weight in the surging stock market, analysts said. ''It will be seen as a positive,'' said Chris Galvin of Hambrecht and Quist. ''The indications were that December was a good quarter and March wasn't. Now it may not be as bad as many were fearing.'' Maffei said the $400 million in so-called unearned revenue, related to the forthcoming release of the Office 2000 software package, would be offset by an increase in investment income. That will allow the company to meet the Wall Street consensus estimate for its current fiscal third quarter, currently at 65 cents a share, according to First Call, compared with 50 cents a share a year earlier. The ''vast majority'' of the unearned Office revenue will be recognized in the fourth quarter, resulting in an earnings increase of about 8 cents a share, he said. The new version of Office, Microsoft's hugely profitable package of word processing and spreadsheet software, will be released to manufacturing by the end of March and widely available in the next quarter, Maffei said. As it has done with past versions of Office, Windows and other software shipped with such coupons, Microsoft will report much of the Office 97 revenue as ''unearned revenue'' on its balance sheet for the current quarter. Maffei said analysts who had been projecting revenue for the current quarter at $4.6 billion should reduce their projections accordingly to $4.2 billion. He noted, however, that Microsoft has been typically conservative in its guidance and could ''achieve a little upside'' on the revenue front. Still, the revenue figures represent an expected sequential slowdown from the second quarter, when Microsoft exceeded all estimates with revenues of $4.94 billion. Maffei also said the company is seeing a slight increase in computer shipments in Japan and is benefiting from an improvement in foreign exchange rates. stocksite.com Gary