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Friday, February 20, 1998 Thursday, Iomega closed at $8 13/16, down $3/16 (-2.08%). TODAY'S RECAP: It was a quiet day on the Iomega message board -- no news releases, no lawsuits, no court rulings -- so posters whiled away the time discussing clik!, Jaz ads, CompUSA and the availability of the laptop Zip and even on the whole notion of investing in IOM for the long-term. Enjoy! INDEX: Use the Search or Find feature of your word processor to locate the article number (Find: 1++, 3++, etc.) - or use AOL's Edit>>Find in Top Window Feature. If Find in Top Window is dimmed, just click on some text, anything, in the IOM Today window and try again.
1++ NovW addresses the issue of "clik! to computer" and likens it to the
Zip
Recap written and posts compiled by TMF Weekly. _______________________________ And now, the Best of the Board...Started 9:00pm ET 2/18/98. 1+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: One Who Didn't Get It? (Was: clik! To Camera Like Zip To Computer
.... ?) Am I one of the only few who got excited about the possibility of 'clik! To Camera Like Zip To Computer' ? Am I one of the only few who didn't get it but the rest of you has got it all along? Am I one of the few who didn't understand it, and/or one of the few who understands it only now? OR, am I the only one who totally misunderstands everything about clik!? The title "clik! To Camera Like Zip To Computer .... ?" needs to be clarified a little bit: It seems that external clik! drives to digital cameras would be like external Zips have been to computer systems, and the same external clik! drive to a computer system may also be like an external Zip drive to a computer system !!! What is the big deal? Some may ask. Didn't you know it? Yes, I knew that Iomega has made it clear during clik! introduction that they would use the same consumer pull strategy they have once used successfully with Zips. The strategy has utilized the practical and superior features of external Zip drives with a reasonable price tag to attract consumers to boost strong retail Zip sales in the aftermarket which in turn create demand for building internal OEM Zips inside computer boxes. Now Iomega wants to use the same consumer pull strategy to market the external clik! drives in order to generate demand for consumer products with clik! inside. Those external clik! drives, if becoming a good seller, supposedly would create consumer pull and demand for products from OEMs like digital cameras with internal clik! drives built-in. But I didn't know what that external clik! drive was really for. External to what? Attached to what? How? Why would it be attractive? Why would it and how could it generate customer pull for OEM products with internal clik! drives built-in? I remember Iomega gave an example. They seemed to have said the stand alone external clik! drive could be used in the field to download digital camera images through the serial cable, although a little bit slow, directly to the clik! disk without going through any laptop or disktop computers. That was a great idea! Very attractive. However, the stand alone external clik! drive could and should do more in order to be a super star. But Iomega was not saying much. So, I think I and others might have written a few posts to offer some opinions and open suggestions about other potentials of the external clik! drive. Iomega also said something like clik! customers will be able to connect the external clik! drive (directly to the digital camera) via a number of connectors, including serial and InfraRed connections. Iomega only named Serial and InfraRed connections. Serial and InfraRed connections? Not very exciting. So, while we were totally in awe of the smallness of the clik! drive, I and others speculated and suggested something at least like a parallel port or SCSI and other interface methods. Now according to HeyKerry's report, the external clik! drive could be mechanical attached to the digital camera body and also has a short cable with an adapter card that will plug into the flash port of the digital camera. Supposely that means that external clik! drive could be working and substituting the CompactFlash while the digital camera is in operation, like an internal clik! drive would. That is quite a big difference from just offloading images from digital cameras using a slow serial cable on the side during time out, even though offloading images from a digital camera would still be a good use of the external clik! drive. As if that alone were not enough, I also found out from HeyKerry's report that the clik! drive can have all those very much desired and faster (compared with the slow serial) pcmcia, scsi, parallel port .... interfaces. There seems to be a good chance that some of my wishes may be coming true. That means that SAME external clik! drive perhaps could also be easily connected to a computer through one of the faster interfaces and may have full and respectable Zip drive like operations. Unless something is being misunderstood somewhere .... should I be excited? 2+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Jaz Radio Ads I heard a radio ad for Jaz three times today here in Los Angeles. The first time I heard the ad I knew immediately it was an Iomega ad because the very first line is "Iomega wants to know whats on your Jaz disk". Kinda like that better than some of the TV spots that tend to sneak up on what the ad is trying to sell. The spot was cute in an entertaining way with a focus on business data being secure on a Jaz disk. Tag line at the end was "Super fast, extremely vast" followed by the "Because its your stuff". 3+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Analyst's perception of IOM On Taking Stock on CNBC, analyst Charles Payne (Wall St. stratgies President) commented on Iomega. Here's the perception that (I think) most analysts have of IOM. Here are some of his comments.... 1- very good company 2- last time I played Iomega was actually as a short 3- taking a huge gamble right now to capture market share by spending $100 million in advertising, not sure if it's going to work 4- Sony has a product coming out that supposedly is a lot better than Iomega's product 5- from a technical point of view you may occasionally get a spurt in the stock that takes it to $12-$13, but it's not one he would prefer to see people in long-term My comments...... 1- No comment on how fast IOM as a company is growing revenues & earnings 2- Last time he played IOM, he was short, so I wouldn't expect him to say many positive things about IOM 3- How can he say "huge gamble" when only time will tell the net effect of the ad campaign (companies do have to advertise to increase product awareness) 4- Time will tell if Sony's product will be any real threat to Iomega, and how can Sony's product "supposedly be a lot better than Iomega's product" since it is still vaporware and has not been tested. Other products that were supposedly better than Zip have done very little to impact Zip drive sales (others have tried and failed). He talked about Sony's vaporware, but did not mention any potential for clik. He talked as if Iomega only makes 1 product. 5- Like most analysts, he does not fully understand the company. Opinions are like you-know-whats, everybody has one, but opinions like this hurt market sentiment toward Iomega and discourage potential investors. 6- It's time for IOM to look for a buyer for the company because (I think) it will take a long time, if ever, for perceptions like his to change. 4+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Laptop Zip I haven't seen much talk on this but CompUSA advertised the laptop zip in this weeks ads. It is finally here! I think this is a huge deal. You can't tell me that a few million of these won't be sold this year. 5+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Just MHO A few thoughts about IOM, culled from a letter I wrote to a few people whom I have convinced to invest in IOM- My confidence in Iomega has been reaffirmed. Their new clik! product (for digital cameras, etc) is looking like it's going to be huge. We could even get a couple hundred million dollars in sales this year from it. Since it is still an unknown, all analyst estimates have a fat 0 in their projections, so any clik! revenue would be pure gravy. They have gotten some incredible endorsements from people "who should know" (ie Bill Gates, Time/Life photographers, Polaroid (who it appears will be the first to announce a dig camera with clik built in), Kodak). Anyway, to read a very thorough report (from HeyKerry again) about Iomega and clik! at the PMA (the biggest professional photography show of the year), click here . I believe that a successful introduction of clik! should restore investor confidence in Iomega and put it back in Wall Street's good favor. In my opinion, if Iomega is not up by 50% next February, then they will have had to have screwed up majorly. I'm trying to be as conservative as I can, because if I based my prediction on Iomega executing flawlessly, I'd say it will be about quadruple in a year. But they have never executed flawlessly and it is unreasonable to expect them to. The floppy replacement war will basically be over by the end of 1998 Christmas season, and if IOM wins, there will be big money to be made. As I think I've mentioned before, if Zip replaces the floppy, then some of the revenue models that I and other Fools have come up with result in a share price well into the hundreds by 2005 (and that is with only Zip- no Jaz, clik!, or other products). When you really think about it, probably 90%+ of Wall Street money managers have only a basic understanding of the company's fundamentals. There are thousands of companies out there, and they can't really understand more than maybe 50, and aren't likely to try to understand a company with as bad a reputation on Wall Street (a Fool stock, Internet hype, etc). It truly is an information revolution, and amateur investors knowing more about a company scares the hell out of them (no more commissions!). I could go on and on, but eventually (possibly not for a couple years, unfortunately) the evidence (Zip replacing floppy, earnings growing 50%/year) will be too much to ignore. That's when things will really take off. Just one quote from HeyKerry's report- << World reknowned Life Magazine & Time Magazine photographer Shelly Katz worked the IOM booth with his $15,000 Kodak digital camera. "clik! is the future of digital film," Katz said. "I'm convinced of that." >> Wow. So in sum, don't be worried about your Iomega stock if you're holding for a year or more. You can make you own decisions about buying more, but in my opinion, you could do a heck of a lot worse than invest in a company that grew from $100 million sales to $2 billion sales in 4 years, and are not at even 10% market penetration. _______________________________ End Report. Posts covered through 9:00pm ET 2/19/98 _______________________________
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