🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Jul24.032618.15040@panix.com>, dfl@panix.com (Danny O'Bedlam) writes:

|>	after hearing tonights report on All Things Considered that
|>DECs second quarter results were a $1.8 BILLION loss.  I think that
|>15,000 is an incredibly SMALL number.  The other rumored figure was
|>30,000 and I'll bet thats right on the money.  

The 1.8 billion is not an operating loss; the operating loss for the
quarter was less than 200 million.  This is less than 5% of gross and
DEC has over 100,000 employees world wide.

About 1.5 billion represents various charges, that include among other things,
write offs of investment in improvements to buildings (ie., if you close
a plant, then the money spent years ago and capitalized for carpet, phones,
etc., which has not been depreciated needs to be written off), money spent
on severance pay in the future which is less than the salary that would have
been paid over the next year, and so on.  In general, the IRS will not allow
losses of this nature to be reported for tax purposes, but the SEC requires
that they be charged against income as soon as known, even cash won't be
spent for months or even years.

I'm not minimizing the negative aspects of the the past several years
financials, but at the same time, I want to make it clear that DEC is not
about to fold like a lot of other companies have done in recent years.
DEC has always been very conservatively run, and as a result has essentially
no debt, but on the other hand a conservative mind set can result in failing
to accept that an asset is worth half today what it was worth yesterday;
you can see wide spead evidence of this when you look at the prices of
houses on the market relative to the prices of houses that have been sold.

DEC has drastically reduced prices on computer systems in the past year,
and as a result has sold more computers than ever.  However, the reduced
margins required even more sales volume to break even.  Well, I'm personally
of the opinion that we can generate the demand; if you think DEC has introduced
a lot of products over the past year, wait until you see what is delivered
in the next year.  One thing is certain, Alpha systems are going to roll
out much, much, much faster than VAX systems did.  And CPU architecture
and products is only one area that will see significant new products.

mulp	These opinions are those of a person who has a lot of faith, and stock,
	in DEC.  Many people look to me for advise and wisdom, but I don't
	recommend that you emulate my actions as I have demonstrated that
	I neither give myself good counsel, nor follow my own good advice.
	I knew I shouldn't have bought that house six years ago....