Quantum contemplates rebound
Published: 11 Dec 2003 10:45 GMT
Are you going to upgrade to Office 2003?
No, I don't think so. It's not in the budget. I don't know if we've even updated, by and large, to Office XP. There is that debate as well. It's going to be increasingly difficult for those… versions to get companies to step up to the work -- not just the investment -- of making those changes.
In terms of getting back into Wall Street's good graces, do you feel you're in a state of purgatory right now?
We have work at do. Sometimes I look at the stock, and I get frustrated. In other ways, I don't look at the stock, because I know what we have to do, and I know that the stock is a lagging indicator, really. I'm not trying to go out and tell a story that makes Wall Street feel like the stock should be higher.
If anything, I like to set a path that's more predictable that we can deliver on. I'm pretty focused on working the changes in the company, improving our products, getting connected with customers, generating revenue, lowering our costs, and letting Wall Street catch up with that.
It sounds like it's a market-share game. Who do you need to take market share from? If IT spending is still on a slow ramp, then you need to take share from other people.
Part of our strategy is to be the consolidator and leader in the midrange tape market. To do that, we have to take share, for sure, from the LTO (Linear Tape Open Ultrium) consortium -- from Hewlett-Packard, IBM -- and from the AIT technology from Sony. We have to do that.
We have today developed the broadest range of DLT products, we have the best compatibility story, we have the lowest entry-point price, and we have the highest performance, highest capacity. We need to execute on that and take share.
What's your research and development spending, as a percentage of total sales?
It's high. It's in the 12 percent range.
Really, that much? Will you keep that steady over the next few quarters?
We'd like to hold it. We think we're spending enough. And maybe even let it come down a little bit and have our revenue grow -- 12 percent is very high. That's almost software-company economics, and we don't have software gross margins. We have decent gross margins -- in the thirties -- but it's not a software gross margin to be able to make those investments.
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