Commodore Stock Up
17 messages in this thread
Surprisingly, not everyone is trashing Commodore this holiday season.
Consider the following:
A recent article from Dow Jones/News Retrieval stated that Commodore
stock shot up more than 22 percent IN ONE DAY, December 23. The price rise
was attributable to columistist Dan Dorfman in USA Today and CNN/CNBC, who
said that Commodore is the number 1 stock pick for 1992 of Standard and
Poor's Corp. stock analyst Larry Freitag.
Freitag is recommending Commodore for fundamental reasons and sees the
stock selling at $20. per share within 12 months.
But Freitag thinks it is also possible that 72 year old Irving Gould
might be amenable to a sale of the company. Freitag thinks C= is a natural
target for a Japanese company because of it technology, and could be worth
$32 per share in a takeover.
A spokesperson for Commodore says the takeover reference in the story is
"just speculation".
I pulled the text of this message off of Prodigy Monday evening. Since
the article is copyrighted, I suggest that anyone who wishes the full
article check out either Dow Jones News Retrieval or Prodigy.
– via Whap!
It was interesting watching these reports of CBM stock today… Those
takeover rumors have floated around before. A contrarian stock-watching
approach might say that the takeover chances have actually lessened, of
course. :-0
interesting. just bought some a few weeks ago at 12.5 and saw it closed
Friday at 16&7/8! OK, guys. Now if they can only make some money!
Commodore gyrates up and down quite a bit and buying it low isn't too
difficult. Just wait a while. Seems they do well year after year in the
period from November to end of January in anticipation of annual results
about Jan 25. STock has risen year after year during that time period.
Often dramatically and very profitably for CBU watchers.
> Bought it low at 12.5…
You could have bought it lower last year at 5…
But I'm not chiding you. I invested in Commodore stock some years back
and lost enough money on it to buy an Amiga 2000 (pre-1992 price, plus
sales tax :-).
Will Rodgers said that making money in the stock market was easy. Just
buy a stock, and when it goes up, sell it. 🙂
– via Whap!
tony, i guess i could have bought at 4.5 or 5. What i did you the year
before was buy CBU at 7.75 (it later went down to 5), but I sold it all at
16.5 less than a year later. I just bought back in at 12.5. All in all,
over the years, CBU has made me a good chunk of change, both options and
stock. I'd say now that it is about 17 again, my earlier doubling and
recent wise purchase (for the time being) weren't bad. I never try to buy
'at the bottom' (the $5 price was the bottom, I bought at 7.75). Or 'sell
at the top' (the $21 was reached before I sold as it settled back to 16.5).
I just try to buy at what seems low to me, then wait and when there's any
substantial advance (and I'm willing to wait out temporary declines, too),
sell and take a profit. By avoiding maximum strategies and settling for
moderate ones I never regret my 'missed' profits – I'm quite pleased with
the decent profits I've made on CBU. They certainly could have been
greater had I been equipped with an Amiga Crystal Ball instead of an Amiga
2000. BTW I told my broker that if it hits 20, sell.
Dan-
You must get the CBM annual report, right? What did Gould and his
cronies get paid last year?
————————————————————TL———-
haven't got it handy right now. but it is in the $millions. Chief crony
is Mehdi Ali. The Presidents of CBM USA come and go like so many used car
salesmen. I can remember 3 in the past 3 years or so, Max Toy, Harry
Copperman, and now Jim Dionne.
Commodore was my first stock purchase. I bought it in late December
1984, when it became known that the company, under Jack Tramiel, was
planning to ship two new computers: the C-128 (stated ship date – January
1985; actual ship date – about August 1985) and the Lorraine (stated ship
date – April 1985; the Amiga shipped September 1985).
A shareholders' action was initiated due to the misinformation of CBU;
Commodore settled out of court, and I got a check for about $17. 🙁
– via Whap!
Tony, At the time Commodore purchased Amiga Corp Jack Tramiel had been gone
from Commodore for about a year and had purchased Atari from Warner
Communications. Because of a loan agreement between Atari Inc. and Amiga
Corp. Tramiel thought he was also purchasing the rights to the Amiga
technology. Before the contractual deadline for Amiga Corp to either repay
the loan or transfer use of their technology to Atari, they were sold to
Commodore (and thus had the cash on hand to repay Atari and end all
obligations to them).
At any rate, what got me started on this — Tramiel was totally out of the
picture, had been kicked out of Commodore for many months, before Commodore
purchased Amiga Corp.
-sja
> At the time C= purchased Amiga, Jack Tramiel was gone from C= for about a
year..
Was it really that long? I thought Jack got the axe sometime in the
time frame Nov. 1984 – Jan 1985. If you're correct, I think that would
push Jack's firing back to the end of 1983 or early 1984 time frame. I
could probably go down my basement and look it up, but I'd be down there
for awhile, and it's not that important.
Right after I bought the shares, I was re-assured by a picture in the
local paper from the CES show that January saying that the C128 was going
to ship REAL SOON NOW. Live and learn…
– via Whap!
Tony, I'm sure of the time frame because during that period of time I
was working for Synapse software. They had an exclusive marketing
agreement with Atari Inc for one of my products (SynFile+). When
Tramiel took over he refused to pay several hundred thousand dollars
to Synapse for products already sold and in stock. Synapse sued and
my company (we were subcontracted to Synapse) finally got a $50k
settlement a few years later when Atari Corp want to go public.
Also, during that time period, Synapse had a "black box" Amiga in house
being front-ended by a Sage computer.
Tramiel tendered his resignation at CBU board of directors meeting in
NY on Friday Janauary 13, 1984, just days after announcing at a press
conference (winter CES show) that Commodore, in 1983, became the
first personal computer manufacturer to exceed one billion in annual
sales, shipping over 3 million computers.
Here's an interesting quote to reflect on:
<Mike Tomczyk reacalls that Irving Gould, in Jan of '84, commented that
Jack Tramiel had brought Commodore to the billion dollar level, but that it
was now time for 'professional management' to take the company to the ten
billion dollar level.>
"Yes," Jack said sarcastically, "let's see how the 'professional' managers
do with the company."
paraphrased from: The Home Computer Wars
Mike Tomczyk (c) 1984
Compute! Books
– Whapp!ng from the North Coast Michael
i don't know what the price was back then, but I think it was about $50 or
so. It sank like a rock thereafter. Hasn't been anywhere close to that
for ages.
> Take over rumors have floated around before…
Yes they have, but no one with the reputation of Dan Dorfman said it. My
brother-in-law follows the stock market very closely (with his Amiga,
even!!!) and told me, "When Dan Dorfman talks, people listen". And
apparently they do, since Commodore was up over 16 1/2 as of the Christmas
break.
I guess the only thing we can do is pray for divine intercession that
some white knight can raise C= out of the marketing depths of hell… 🙂
– via Whap!
Tony-
Maybe Gould will die, and the millions he makes each year will be
rerouted to hire dozens of good engineers and technicians! Yeah, we could
be so lucky!
Still, I hope that the Japanese don't buy CBM…they'd do a better job
of running the company, that's for sure, but there are competent managers
in America, too. Not as many per capita, perhaps, but enough to run
Commodore, surely.
————————————————————TL———-
As a Japanese I second that Japanese don't buy CBM. 🙂 They do a good
business + make supposedly impressive machine<-whatever that is but they
lack creativity & user support that all American computer show. If you buy
Japanese personal computer in Japan, you'll get 286 or 386 or V30(<-wierd
compatible chip) wrapped up in a cute little box that you could only do
wordprocessing. & worst thing about it is that they ship out new models
every year that has absolutely no compatibility with the ones you have. So
like me, most of the smarter people whose got tired of Japanese computer
industry's business abuse buy Amiga or Mac! Believe me, Japanese computer
company makes Commodore looks like charity organization for doing user
support campaign like Gold Service.
– THANX R.SATOH ->via Whap!
Thanks R. (what does that stand for anyway?) Satoh, that makes me feel
better anyway!
– Whapp!ng from the North Coast Michael