From: R.KITTREDGE@MD-B.Prime.COM (Roland Kittredge - Marketing 620-2800 x4666, 508)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.prime
Subject: CV Article
Date: 13 Aug 92 12:44:08 GMT
Reply-To: Info-Prime@Blx-A.Prime.COM

RM - PROFESSIONAL INVESTOR REPORT (PI)                       STORY 4

08/12 End Of Computervision Saga As Anguished As Beginning >CVN

   By Laurie DeLater Weeks and Christopher Elliott
        Dow Jones Staff Reporters

   NEW YORK -DJ- The rebirth of a public software company called
Computervision Corp. (CVN) is proving nearly as anguished as its last four
years as a subsidiary of Prime Computer Inc.
   Prime, a minicomputer maker, acquired Computervision in a hostile
takeover 1988 just months before Prime itself became a takeover target.
Later, it went private in a leveraged buyout.
   Shed of Prime's computer business, Computervision is now set to go
public again in a $300 million stock offering.
   In an already-soft stock market for new issues, Computervision faces two
other hurdles.  First, many technology investors have shunned the company
because its revenues have stalled.  Second, value investors are angling for
an even better value because they know lead underwriter Lehman Brothers
Inc. is anxious to complete the deal.
   Part of the proceeds from the stock and concurrent $300 million bond
offerings, which could be completed as early as this week, will go toward
paying down debt owed to lenders including Shearson Lehman Brothers
Holdings Inc., the investment banking/institutional sales and trading unit
of Shearson Lehman.
   Shearson wound up holding a ''temporary'' bridge loan that enabled a
client, the venture capital firm J.H. Whitney & Co., to complete the
leveraged buy-out of Prime Computer.
   Last month, Shearson was forced to write down the value of the loan,
which had clouded its balance sheet, after the proposed price range of the
stock offering and the stake it would retain in the public company were
reduced.
   Computervision also feels some urgency, adds Harry Lange, a computer
analyst at Fidelity Investments.  ''The company feels it's losing out on
contracts by waiting,'' he says.  Some contractors have been reluctant to
do business with the company until it restructures its highly leveraged
balance sheet, Lange says.
   Robert Natale, a new issues analyst for Standard & Poor's, recommended
purchase at $15, the midpoint of the current asking range of $14 to $16, or
below.  ''The company has a very broad customer base, is coming out with
new software packages on its main product lines over the next 18 months and
is porting them to more attractive hardware platforms,'' Natale wrote in a
report.
   Relative to its peers, the stock would be cheap at $15 a share, which
equals 10 times estimated earnings of at least $1.50 a share for next year.
Comparable multiples range from 12 times for Intergraph Corp. (INGR) to 42
times for Parametric Technology Corp. (PMTC).
   Lange doubts the market would snatch up 20 million shares at their
current asking price, which is down from the original plan of $18 to $20 a
share.  ''I think they're more likely to price next week at $12 or $13,''
he said.
   In conjunction with the price talk being reduced, the size of the offer
was boosted from the originally planned 15.8 million shares.  If the offer
goes as planned, the public will own 42% of the shares outstanding with
Shearson Lehman owning 25%.  An affiliate of J.H. Whitney will own the
remaining 33%.
--  3 05 PM EDT 08-12-92}
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