Post #3032642

In 2002 a man spoke truth to wall street. It never happened again. “At 10x revenues, to give you a ten-year payback, I have to pay you 100% of revenues for ten straight years in dividends. That assumes I can get that by my shareholders. That assumes I have zero cost of goods sold, which is very hard for a computer company. That assumes zero expenses, which is really hard with 39,000 employees. That assumes I pay no taxes, which is very hard. And that assumes you pay no taxes on your dividends, which is kind of illegal. And that assumes with zero R&D for the next ten years, I can maintain the current revenue run rate. Now, having done that, would any of you like to buy my stock at $64? Do you realise how ridiculous those basic assumptions are? You don’t need any transparency. You don’t need any footnotes. What were you thinking?” Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, 31st March 2002 The stock got decimated later on. No one even knows what Sun Microsystem even is now.