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Technology Stocks : INPR - Inprise to Borland (BORL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cube who wrote (2589)	4/5/1999 7:52:00 PM
From: ED_L	Respond to of 5102

Tried to warn board members in my June 26, 98 post that a CEOs handwriting gives important clues to his leadership abilities. In Delbert's case the downward thrust on the "t" in his 1st name. My prediction came true. He stopped signing his full name in annual reports after that post and only signed his name as "Del". See post: Message 5025448

To: Cube who wrote (2589)	4/5/1999 8:10:00 PM
From: David R	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5102

You have a flawed conclusion in your original post. Inprise can still be shorted by any off shore broker. Even naked shorting is legal in many countries. Anybody in the US who wants to short INPR can do so using an offshore broker. Thus you can not draw any concrete conclusions by observing the short interest (i.e. suggesting that it must be the holders of the floorless debt). Likewise, you have a flawed assumption that the holders of the debt are hostile, and will gladly engage in a very risky even trying to short the company into the ground. You seem to imply that by holding the debt, they can try short INPR with zero risk. This is not true. Imagine this hypothetical scenario: The buyer of the debt decided to try and short INPR to Ground-Zero. Under such a scenario, the lawyers would certainly consume all INPR cash in shareholder and customer lawsuits leaving nothing for any debt holders. Thus, the only way that the debt holders could recover their $25M investment would be via shorting (8,000,000 shares at today's price). If they tried to short sell that many shares, they would likely drive the price down so that they would endup having to short perhaps 10,000,000 shares, or more, to recoup the original $25,000,000. Now certainly, Oracle does not want INPR to go belly up since they use INPR tools, and seeing INPR at $1.25/share, they make a $5 share buyout offer and use the cash-out provision to deal the debt. Being short 10,000,000 shares means that these debt-holders now have to produce 10,000,000 shares, and they would be in competition with all other short sellers. Under the best scenario of a ground-zero short, they might recoup their initial investment. Worst case losses could be in the hundreds of millions (several companies bidding for INPR technology). No, the holder of this debt does best if INPR thrives. INPR has some good technology and still has a loyal base of developers (in spite of Del). INPR has Value far beyond the book value, and at an attractive price, there would be a buyer. $

To: Cube who wrote (2589)	4/5/1999 8:59:00 PM
From: Dennis Nicks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5102

With only a 9000 share increase in the short interest, that shows a decrease in the percent of total shares sold short, if you factor in the floorless debt factor. If we go with your theory that the floorless debt holders are shorting to zero, here's how the scenario goes: Lets say you have $25 million of the Class B shares. If you buy at $5 (beginning of March), your class B shares give you 5 million common. Now at a share price of 3, you get 8.3 million common for your $25 million of class B stock. So, the float on INPR has increased by roughly 3 million or about 6% (an increase of 3 million shares from the floorless debt and 50 million issued and outstanding total). If in fact, the floorless debt holders are shorting these extra shares, this would result in an increase of 3 million more shares sold short, which hasn't happened. In fact, if you look at the percent of INPR stock shorted, with the extra 3 million common shares factored into the picture, we have a decrease in the percent short position from last month. This analysis suggests the holders of the floorless debt options have not begun shorting the stock to zero. Which means if they decided to do this, it would make the situation even worse. Dennis