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

To: S. Day who wrote (956)	5/14/1999 8:19:00 PM
From: kas1	Respond to of 10934

sday-- re: downsouth's "this is just my opinion": one has to be very careful to steer clear of pump-n-dump, both legally and ethically. i, like ds, put a similar disclaimer on my messages when i make such speculative statements, mostly to remind people not to buy a stock because of what they read on si, and of course to stay within the bounds of the law. if you read any corporate report, you will find similar language.

To: S. Day who wrote (956)	5/14/1999 9:01:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10934

The Fool interviews Dan Warmenhoven CEO of Network Appliance S.Day, I am sure this must have been posted here before but worth a repeat I think in case anybody is interested or missed it the first time around. ========================= fool.com March 23, 1999 TMF Interview With Network Appliance CEO Dan Warmenhoven With Dale Wettlaufer (TMF Ralegh) Conducted February 25, 1999 About six months ago, I heard about Network Appliance (Nasdaq: NTAP), a data storage and retrieval company whose stock has quietly gained nearly 100% per year, compounded annually, since coming public in 1995. This is one of those stealth companies, like printer manufacturer Lexmark, that has compiled excellent returns to shareholders without wide notice outside the people who cover them and, of course, their shareholders.

To: S. Day who wrote (956)	5/14/1999 9:17:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10934

SD: Did you say 'kind of hard to justify current P/E'? Well then this should interest you,I hope.<g> From the same Fool interview the CEO NETAP,Dale of course is the Fool,the other one as you know is the CEO of NTAP ===================== Dale: I run a value portfolio here at the Fool and the largest holding is Cisco, and lots of value investors would stay away from that. Warmenhoven: Yeah, the P/Es are too high, right? Dale: Yeah. Warmenhoven: In fact, that's an issue for us.... one of the big issues for investors interested in getting into this area will say, "Gee, you multiples are too high." And I'll say, "Compare us to some of the other companies and I'm not so sure. Plus look at how the stock has performed over the last two or three years. The multiple's always been too high." In fact, I had a meeting with a major portfolio manager and we had met with him a year prior and he took out his notes from a year ago and he said, yeah you did this, you did that exact change with the product line, introduced this feature, you did this deal, etc. And he takes out his calculator and starts punching some numbers all of a sudden. Our CFO looks at him and says, "What are you doing, calculating the money you didn't make by not buying a year ago." And he said, "Yeah, absolutely." It turns out they're now are a big investor. The question is not "Is the multiple at the moment high?" It's a question of "Do you think the stock has appreciation potential?" I think we're a high growth company. I personally believe we have the opportunity to be the next Cisco. I think we can create a market segment called data storage appliances, and I think we can be a leader in it. I think we can dominate that segment. Dale: One of the biggest hang-ups I have is so-called value investors out there who like Bethlehem Steel at 12 times earnings where the target market is growing at 2-3% per year, but they don't like markets where something is selling at 80 times earnings and growing 30 times faster. It's exponential growth that people have trouble with. ......