The Swedish word for "short story" is "novell," and the software maker that goes by that name is in the middle of quite a sad tale.
Novell
As a result, the stock took a brutal beating overnight. The price dropped by more than 17% by midday, but it's still not cheap at 60 times trailing free cash flow. Pricey valuations like that are usually afforded to fast-growing companies like Google or Novell competitor Red Hat
The recent stock-repurchase program seems designed to appease short-term traders, not investors with a long-term commitment. As I just noted, the shares aren't exactly trading at garage-sale prices, and I'd be shocked if there weren't any better opportunities for investing that cash.
But it seems that the market largely wants to believe the Novell story. Every time the price drops back toward reasonable valuations because of earnings warnings or other bad news, it soon starts to creep upward again.
It can be argued that what's good for Red Hat Linux is good for Novell's SuSE product, too, but that's not an entirely fair comparison. Though SuSE is second only to Red Hat in the commercial Linux market, and remains the most potent weapon in Novell's arsenal, the company is still trying to resuscitate the dying Netware operating system. It's pumping cash into projects like ROC -- a middleware system that helps administrators manage Linux and Netware servers through a common toolset -- that seem designed to prolong the life of the aging operating system.
I'm afraid it's all iron lungs and defibrillators at this point, and Novell would probably be better off as a pure Linux company. Spin off the Netware support or sell it to a consulting expert like IBM
More Foolish reading:
None of these stocks has been picked for any of our Foolish newsletters -- yet. Treat yourself to a free trial or two, and see whether any of them make the cut this month.
Fool contributor Anders Bylund is an Ubuntu man, having cut his teeth on Debian Slinky. If none of that makes any sense, Novell might not be a stock for you. He holds no stake in any company discussed, and disclosure rules are there to make sure he'd tell you otherwise.