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To: J R KARY who wrote (5225)	5/18/1999 4:32:00 PM
From: David Harker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8220

The techniques you describe are legal, and are effective. You may call them risky, but my guess is that they have people who manage that stuff who know more about it than you and I put together. I'm also sure that Dell/Intc/Msft got where they are today due to superb management, very smart, efficient internal operations, etc, etc - NOT due to the tactics you describe. Enough on this, join the debate on the dell thread if you care to. EDIT: for example, look at the current, just-released Dell quarterly report - EPS up 45%, operating income up 40%, net income up 42%, revenues up 41% - those things are 99.99%-based on OPERATING brilliance, not financial mumbo-jumbo: dell.com "Dell generated more than $1 billion in cash from operations during the quarter, which was used, in part, to repurchase 18 million shares of the company's common stock. At quarter-end, cash and marketable securities totaled a record $4.0 billion, up from $2.4 billion one year ago. The company again led the computer systems industry in overall asset management, operating on six days of inventory for the second consecutive quarter and recording a return on invested capital of 189 percent." That last line means that for every dollar invested in Dell, by its owners, the return was 189%. There are various formulas for computing ROIC, see Motley Fool site for a tutorial on this a few months ago, but very, very few companies come close to Dell's ROIC.