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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Phoenix who wrote (23917)	3/25/1999 5:58:00 PM
From: John Stichnoth	Respond to of 77398

I knowwww... Guess I've got a bug up.... CSCO's revenue growth is definitely slowing, however. That doesn't bother me, and I can still make the numbers work with slowly decreasing growth. They've got a ways to go before they become an average growth company. For the record, Value Line (whose guess may be as good or bad as anybody's out 3 years) has them growing revenues 28% p.a. to 2002. The key with CSCO, for me, is the visibility of those revenues. How confident can I be that they'll still be increasing the bottom line out 4, 5, 8 years? I am investing in future earnings. Not last year's earnings, and really not just the next couple of years' earnings. By the time I would look at selling today's purchase, analysts will be looking at 2002 earnings at the earliest. I don't want to buy a stock that I can't be confident about over an extended period. To an extent I'm buying management--because that's how you'll get better and better results. That sounds sort of Warren Buffetish doesn't it? But it works in the tech sector, too. We've seen time and again that the successful tech companies have the strongest management. Think of what sets MSFT, INTC, CSCO and AMAT apart. Not just their products, which after all aren't always the best (although they're good). These companies lead because they have strong management that attracts strong talent. Eventually, they all become core holdings, because they execute, they gain very strong competitive positions, and they're tough to dislodge. Two companies in different stages of becoming similar may be QCOM (in wireless) and RMBS (although the boat's still out on how far they'll be able to take their technology edge). Don't mind my ranting. I had a tough afternoon with the kids. And it should have been great with what QCOM did. Just my opinions. Best, JS