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Technology Stocks : Oracle Corporation (ORCL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: hasbeen101 who wrote (10309)	4/3/1999 3:40:00 PM
From: Surprise	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 19080

Frank Cappielo on Wall Street Week Friday night seem to think Oracle's growth rate would pick up after Y2K was past. Companies would have more money to spend on increasing productivity. He thought Oracle was a good buy since coming off its' high. Any comments?

To: hasbeen101 who wrote (10309)	4/3/1999 3:45:00 PM
From: lml	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 19080

Damien, I've read your posts & believe I understand your hypothesis. Agree that good things don't last forever. But the underpinnings of such long term trends also don't last forever. They change for better or worse. We live in a dynamic world -- especially when it comes to hi-tech. IMHO, survival as a hi-tech requires the ability to adapt & change to quickly changing/evolving markets & technologies. Those who can't meet this criteria eventually fade away, merge, & die. Those who can are able to seize the opportunity of new trends. Andy Grove identified this phenomena as inflection points, & emphasized how critcial they were to the future fortunes of a company. ORCL, is a company that has proven in the past its ability to see new trends & alter the direction, strategy of its business. Of course, when this takes place one is going to see some falloff in historical growth. But to conclude that its best days are over is unsupported by the nature of high technology & the track record of the company -- over the longer term. You could be right, but you may also be wrong. Nothing is a given. But I submit that your hypothesis has limited application in a constantly changing dynamic arena that the hi-tech industry offers successfully-managed companies. This is particularly true for companies that have established dominant market niches that, while unlikely to experience unbridled growth forever, are unlikely to go away. Such staying power presents opportunity. Its up to management to utilize its dominant market position to pursue more rapidly growing markets. ORCL is doing this. Whether they ultimately succeed is still indeterminate, but they have made impressive strides over the past 18 months. The recent falloff price, IMHO, is based upon analysts' perception that confirmation of their strategy, namely top-line revenues, have not yet appeared in the company's financial statementss. [If only such attitude were applied to Internet stocks.] Whether confirmation appears next Q is obviously critical to the intermediate performance of the stock. Granted we won't see any documentation to support that ORCL's strategy is "taking hold," til' June, we all should know that the market ALWAYS looks forward. I believe beginning next month we will begin to see institutions to placing their bets on whether "confirmation" of ORCL's strategy will make it to the top line 4Q99 & ultimately to the bottom line going forward. A key date for me is ORCL's analyst day, May 13, not necessarily the release of 4Q numbers in June. All IMO.