Daniel Kunstler Quotations

While it is a good thing that Apple is taking steps to protect its margins, we believe that Apple did this very reluctantly, as rising prices are a rarity in the PC industry.

A lot of the bear case about Sun is that they'd never be able to recoup their gross margin.

It's just good old-fashioned profitability. No smoke, no mirrors. And they have a chief financial officer who has his thumb on every nickel, which is the way to go.

There is a lot of upside potential in this for Compaq.

The game was over, it was going to be a commodity product. And here, even in sort of this extremely price-competitive environment, they managed to improve their gross margin.

There's no smoking gun, no deliberate malfeasance. That's going to be a benefit to the stock from the veil being lifted, but it's a one-time thing.

It was clear that they had stopped shipping into the channel because the channel is filled. Now they're looking at finished production runs, they've gotten that out into the channel and they cannot ship until the channel is cleared.

They're aligning themselves with a very good name in the Internet space; the deal gives them a funnel for a pretty broad spectrum of products and services, even beyond their initial investment; and they're putting their toe in the waters of revenue sharing for Internet services. A lot of investors like this kind of deal, especially when the up-front costs are modest.

It is a very difficult kind of transaction to stand up and cheer for.

They're almost obliged to disclose something about linearity, and to the extent that it's a point or two below, they basically have to say that. That's pretty much what I expected.