I agree, and what's more, if M$ had not made a one-off payment of $100m,
Inprise would have been $60m odd down the tubes for the year. I doubt if M$
will make another payment next year

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Tim Knipe [mailto:timk@...]
>Sent: Friday, 11 February 2000 9:32
>To: IBDI@onelist.com
>Subject: Re: [IBDI] RE: Interbase news
>
>
>From: "Tim Knipe" <timk@...>
>
>Syarzhuk Kazachehnka <bamboo7431@...> wrote...
>> For the year ended on Dec 31, 1999, Inprise earned $150.550M in revenues
>> from "Licenses and other". Cost of "Licenses and other" revenues?
>$19.267M.
>> That means a dollar invested in "Licenses and other" earns $7.81 - not
>bad!
>> "Services" - revenues - $24.256M, cost of revenues - $22.676
>> So the dollar invested in "Services" earns $1.07
>>
>> Now tell me which business would YOU want to be in - the one where you
>earn
>> 7.81 on the dollar or 1.07? So where is the "future"?
>
>If you look more closely, "cost of licenses and other" does not
>include R&D,
>or "selling, general and administrative" expenses. Presumably it only
>includes the cost of printing boxes, stamping CDs and shipping them out.
>
>The 'cost of services' is pretty much tied up in the people providing the
>service. You sell $1000 of service, it costs you $950 to pay the guy
>providing the service and provide equipment. For boxes of
>software, you sell
>$3000 of software, it costs you maybe $20 for the box and the CD. The real
>cost was in R&D and was incurred in a previous period (R&D being an
>investment after all).
>
>The thing I found interesting was $42M spent on R&D and $123M on "Selling,
>general and administrative". That's a lot spent on "stuff".
>
>However, I personally think services can't pay enough per share for the
>likes of Redhat etc. to ever be profitable.
>
>--
>Tim Knipe | Plasmatech Software Design | http://plasmatech.com
>Windows Explorer controls for Delphi, C++Builder and ActiveX!
>
>
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