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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: La Traguhs who wrote (6079)	4/16/1999 9:29:00 PM
From: Mark Oliver	Respond to of 9256

Just out of curiosity, do you remember if Paul Fox was one of the analysts on the panel at Diskcon? I think I spoke to him after the discussion and specifically asked what his views were on Y2K. I was surprised to find, whether this was Paul Fox or not, that there seemed to be little strong opinion on Y2K. This has been typical. I've asked this question again and again. It was like people expected it to be business as usual. Perhaps its too scary to contemplate anything else. Most often they said they thought the market would be divided with just as many companies buying in advance of Y2K as companies buying after Y2K. I think it will be interesting to see what happens at the desktop. If the most common operating system found on the corporate desktop is Windows 3.1, there seems to be an obvious need for upgrade. On the other hand we see all the high flying enterprise software companies such as Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft, etc. having trouble selling new software for hardware platforms that might be replaced. So, what is exactly the direction of Paul Fox's concern? Is this enterprise issue or the general issue? The fact that he downgraded EMC and StorageTek, as well as Seagate, Maxstor and Hutchinson is a curious combination. Is this an enterprise downgrade? Is Maxstor an enterprise dependent drive vendor? So why picked on these companies? If this is a generic problem, shouldn't there be a list that look over the entire sector? Again, it seems to me that we might see a shift from normal quarterly buying patterns, but what do you think will be the result if you look at the buying patterns over a longer-term? I mean will we see a bad year or a good year? If we get one bad quarter followed by one extra good quarter will it all turn out to be a wash? If so, will the market be so shortsighted as to not realize this? Anyway, I agree with you that the market in general will be emotionally tested by the media who won't be able to resist sensational stories, regardless of their foundation in truth. I started selling in December which turned out to be a mistake. Lately I have been buying again. I can't help but think Hutchinson is good buy this price. Certainly, it was a great risk to this sort of correction in the '40s, but at some point these fears seem to be factored into the price. I can't respect this downgrade from Paul Fox. Its timeliness is so out of time as to be ridiculous. Regards, Mark

To: La Traguhs who wrote (6079)	4/16/1999 9:49:00 PM
From: Mark Oliver	Respond to of 9256

I took these news releases from briefing.com as a sample of what might be thought of the state of the enterprise. Certainly Sun Microsystems would be a good company to look at if you thought there was coming problem. Also, Veritas seems like an interesting choice because it would seem their success would reflect on Seagate. Generally they all seem to be either upgrades or re-iterations of buys. The one exception was a downgrade for Merrill Lynch for Sun Microsystems "due to cautious outlook for fiscal Q4". So they're still seems to be a lot of optimism with perhaps some underlying caution from the analysts. I guess that means we need to see the market correct by 20 percent before they will come in and worn us that there could be a problem. Regards, Mark Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW) 56 1/2 -3 15/16: --UPDATE-- Bear Stearns reiterates "buy" rating on supplier of enterprise network computing products..... Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW) 56 5/8 -3 13/16: --UPDATE-- SG Cowen reiterates "strong buy" rating on supplier of enterprise network computing products..... Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW) 56 1/8 -4 5/16: --UPDATE-- Goldman Sachs maintains "recommended list" rating on supplier of enterprise network computing products..... Veritas Software Corp. (VRTS) 80 -3 3/8: --UPDATE-- CE Unterberg Towbin reiterates "buy" rating on developer of end-to-end storage management solutions as company posts record strong Q1 results; sales channels show solid momentum for the coming quarters and are strong enough to deliver current revenue estimates; company increasing sales to e-commerce, financial institutions, and telecommunications customers; raises FY99 EPS estimate from $1.08 to $1.11 and FY00 EPS from $1.53 to $1.55..... Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW) 55 -5 7/16: --UPDATE-- CSFB reiterates "buy" rating on supplier of enterprise network computing products as fiscal Q3 results could have approached $0.37 had it chosen not to increase discretionary expenses; believes guidance by company for 2000 is conservative; raises its 12-month price target to $70..... Veritas Software Corp. (VRTS) 80 3/4 -2 5/8: CSFB upgrades developer of end-to-end storage management solutions from "buy" to "strong buy" as company reports better-than-expected March quarter; company continues to generate solid margin expansion and has made significant integration related progress; raises FY99 revenue and EPS estimates from $320 mln and $1.08 to $328 mln and $1.12 a share; raises FY00 revenue and EPS estimates from $480 mln and $1.42 to $492 mln and $1.58 a share; also ups price target from $92 to $103..... Oracle Corp. (ORCL) 25 +1/8: JP Morgan Securities initiates coverage of relational database developer with "market perform" and a price target of $30; believes that ORCL's products are better than ever, but its markets are not cooperating as database and ERP customers are distracted by Y2K fixes..... Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW) 56 1/8 -4 5/16: --UPDATE-- Merrill Lynch downgrades supplier of enterprise network computing products from near-term "buy" to "accumulate" due to cautious outlook for fiscal Q4; keeps long-term "buy" rating; has a price target of $70..... Veritas Software (VRTS) 83 3/8 -3: developer of end-to-end storage management solutions reports Q1 net of $0.26 a share, two cents above the First Call mean, vs yr-ago EPS of $0.14; revenue rose 84% to $71.9 million; see press release..... Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW) 60 7/16 -2 1/8: supplier of enterprise network computing products posts a fiscal Q3 net of $0.71 a share, (pre-split), a penny ahead of the First Call estimate, vs year-ago profit of $0.59 a share; revenues rose 22.9% to $2.9 bln; see press release .....