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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Earlie who wrote (57113)	4/23/1999 10:57:00 AM
From: BGR	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Earlie, Thank you for your comments. I am aware of the easy comparison YOY. However, it is the relative shift in the product mix (geared more towards higher end corporate sector) along with unit, ASP and revenue gains and a clear improvement in earnings (less loss that is) which is very interesting to me. This confirms for me (the obvious) that when a company stops selling products at a loss to preserve market share in the consumer sector (IBM) it improves both units and revenues profitably (on a relative scale), wheras when a company does the opposite (CPQ) it gains in units and maybe even revenues but loses profitability. From this, I see a rough future ahead for EMachines and MicroWorkz unless they have found a means to improve efficiency dramatically and a bright future for DELL. Would appreciate your thoughts on this. I know that you have different opinions about DELL's valuation, but that aside do you have a more positive opinion about DELL's business strategy now? -BGR.

To: Earlie who wrote (57113)	4/23/1999 11:05:00 AM
From: Alohal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

Earlie, that's all you could find with the IBM report, that the 1Q 1998 were so bad that it made 1Q 1999 look good by comparison? AND you call it a scam? I'm very disappointed. Gee, maybe it was just a very strong Quarter, they are allowed to have one or two of those aren't they? <gggg> Aloha.

To: Earlie who wrote (57113)	4/23/1999 11:39:00 AM
From: Eggolas Moria	Respond to of 132070

Earlie, thanks for the comments, but as of now, I don't see anything that would indicate a major misrepresentation of the quarter. Hardware revenues increased 17% on the back of an almost 50% increase in PCs to $3.6B from $2.4B. Gross margin was about 18%. leading to an $89 million loss. IMO, IBM still has a bit too much in its cost structure, so it will be interesting to see how Project Odyssey goes. Sales growth out of channel was about 25% BTW. The key here is that PCs didn't hurt the quarter in a meaningful way.