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Technology Stocks : QUANTUM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: still learning who wrote (8859)	5/14/1999 11:51:00 AM
From: Frodo Baxter	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9124

Don't know where you got your information, but I got mine at the cc. Exchange ratio of .489 with a collar of 14-20.

To: still learning who wrote (8859)	5/20/1999 7:50:00 AM
From: Lutz Moeller	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9124

Disk drive makers stalled in '98 Mercury News Staff Report mercurycenter.com Disk drive makers took a beating last year -- and it showed in the Silicon Valley 150. Six Silicon Valley companies lost 1 percent of their sales and racked up $944.2 million in losses in 1998. That's a swift descent from 1997, when eight companies turned a profit of $781.9 million. The squeeze drove StorMedia and Syquest Technology out of the listing this year. And it's unclear whether a turnaround for the industry is coming soon. Even though manufacturers are shipping more drives for notebooks, desktop computers and servers than ever before, companies face continuing price pressure. The popularity of the sub-$1,000 PC has forced drive makers to cut 20 percent to 30 percent from their drive prices to stay competitive. ''It'll be a year of tough competition and difficult price declines,'' says John Monroe, chief analyst of rigid disk drives at Dataquest Inc., the San Jose market research firm. The irony is that the industry will ship anywhere from 155 million to 160 million drives, up to 10 percent more than last year's 144 million drives. And that is coming from only eight major disk drive makers. Compare that with 1988, when 62 makers shipped 15.8 million drives. ''There's no reason why eight suppliers can't make money shipping that many drives,'' Monroe said. Seagate Technology of Scotts Valley is particularly poised for a rebound, despite a horrific 1998. Last year, its sales dropped by 24 percent as it lost $530 million while laying off 24,000 employees. In the midst of this, Seagate's board fired CEO Alan Shugart, an industry pioneer and a Seagate co-founder, and named Stephen Luczo in his place. So far, Seagate has improved dramatically, posting a profit of $118 million for its third quarter ended April 2. It is getting its drives to the market more quickly than last year, when it lagged in some areas by as much as a year. Since its restructuring, it has focused more on the hard-disk and tape-storage businesses and stopped making drives for notebook and mobile computers. The biggest boost for Seagate, which controls roughly 20 percent of the disk drive market, came in its shipments for desktop computers. It also helped that retail PC sales soared 41 percent in December, according to research firm PC Data Inc. But other companies in the drive industry are still looking for a turnaround. Last year, Read-Rite Corp. lost $319.7 million while facing a 30 percent decline in sales. This March, the Milpitas firm warned it would lose money in its coming fiscal second quarter and post a 10 percent decline in sales. Last year, Komag Inc., of San Jose, suffered a 48 percent drop in sales and lost $366.3 million. Still, it's expecting to show sales 3 percent to 5 percent below the $92.7 million it reported for the fourth quarter of 1998.