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Technology Stocks : Ampex Corporation (AEXCA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: killybegs who wrote (8010)	4/29/1999 2:42:00 PM
From: B. A. Marlow	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 17679

No problem with Conf Call legal and regulatory environment, Jubimer. I see it this way: A conference call is a conference call. A news conference, if you will. If there are limitations (and there always are), you disclose your constraints. But every news conference is a marketing opportunity. A public company needs to remember this and take advantage of it. AXC/TVW/Gardy McGrath must exploit the marketing opportunity on its clients' behalf. After all, it's not selling technobabble, it's selling the solution. In the past, a conference call's target audience was indeed the "professional" investment community, and that's what's changed. You don't need the Net to get to the big boys. So, by definition, putting your news conference over the Net is reaching out to individual investors. I'm certain that the majority of PSIX's "viewers" were people exactly like us. Many were PSIX shareholders, many were AXC shareholders; many were competitors, customers, potential customers or potential shareholders of both firms. Believe quarterly conference calls are always a good time for telling your story. SEC regs do not restrict a company within reasonable bounds, and if you listen to a lot of conference calls, you see just how much flexibility there is. Everybody reads the obligatory "forward-looking statements disclosure" and therewith, the party begins. PSIX's being in the middle of a financing didn't restrict the presentation at all. (Hey, we even shoehorned in our own shameless plug!) All of the information was there, but it was dense and difficult to grasp. That's why the analysts repeatedly asked for breakdowns of the data. They always do. That's the signal you're not communicating effectively. So with all due respect, Jubimer, a quarterly conference call is no longer a bean-counters' convention, if it ever was one. It's very much a marketing event. In fact, every utterance of a public company is a marketing statement and a marketing opportunity. Even a product recall is a marketing opportunity. Remember Tylenol? Remember the Pentium math bug? The difference the Net makes is twofold: the news can be heard or watched in real-time, and can get to more people than ever before. The metaphor has changed irrevocably. We're never going back to having to read about a company's performance in "dead tree" media: tomorrow's "Wall Street Journal" or next week's trade publications. Again, the market is vast and AXC/TVW/Gardy McGrath has the skill-set. Let's put the "solution" to work. BAM