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Technology Stocks : Aspect Telecommunications (ASPT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sunil Veluvali who wrote (902)	4/14/1999 6:15:00 PM
From: JAPG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2018

Sunil, Revenues were 100.1 millions ( 51.1M product & 48.9M in services). The drop is in product wrt Q4/98 and Q1/98. As far as services is concern they keep on growing quarter after quarter. It is very difficult to go down in services because it is a momentous stream as I have indicated in the past. The company problems are in product sales as they transition, stop selling their hardware and have to make up revenues from more software and services. An alternative is to act as a system integrator and sell other people's hardware when you sell a complete system (LU, NT or whatever the user wants). This helps sales but not margins in a big way. The big issue is how good is the new software they are preparing.That's what CSCO paid $2bn's for in the Geotel deal. JAPG

To: Sunil Veluvali who wrote (902)	4/14/1999 6:52:00 PM
From: corporal spewchunks	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 2018

Finally, a truly upbeat conference call. The best I've heard and I've heard a few. They cleared up some major "vision" issues. They let it be known that they have a definite direction, the direction is consistent with where the market is going, including some of the acquisition activity lately, and I now longer have the impression that they are wandering in the woods. I wouldn't be surprised to see a gap open tomorrow. On the other hand, the larger than anticipated (loss -19 vs. E.-10 operating) may be used in some quarters to try to beat the stock back down towards 6. That loss is the least significant thing to come out of the conference and any weakness on the open will be a real opportunity. The analysts who questioned JC, EK and BI were not really focused on the loss. EK said that he thought the company would be back on track before the year ends. ie. profitable. I suspect that the company could have put up better numbers but elected to take the pain now rather than diluting future performance. The company has bought back 3.25 M shares and will continue the buyback under present Board authorization of 5M shares. Analyst Peter Wright from (?) who seems sharper than the norm, pointed out the disparity between what CSCO paid for Geotech and the value that the market has placed on ASPT ie. 2B vs. 350K market cap for ASPT, a company with considerably more revenue. I don't exactly know what criteria the analysts use before they raise an opinion from hold to accumulate or buy but IMHO we deserve at least one of those. I guess we are not going to get it from EJ of PJ. He didn't ask a single question. Hopefully, the company will take advantage of any out of focus selling and buy into any weakness. Finally, I wonder whether some of these analysts will either be replaced by software guys or have to move up on the learning curve so that they have a better understanding of where the market and ASPT are going. I have criticized the company in the past for not making their new business plan more visible to the financial markets and being too timid when they did say something. That objection has been overruled by today's call.