Best Small Cos. Piper Jaffrey PC analyst Ashok Kumar thinks that the revenue growth at most PC companies is beginning to wheeze, even though the number of units sold is increasing. Wall Street had been expecting a PC boom in the first half of 1999, hoping that the corporations will spend billions to circumvent the dreaded Y2K bug. Prediction were that strong sales during the first six months would be followed by slowing sales in the second half of the year.
Bears think that PC buying by big companies is all but over.
Over the past few weeks, most of the companies tied to the PC food chain have come out and announced that business is weak. The malignancy is widespread. Hickey is worried and is not alone in this gloom and doom outlook. In recent weeks, several Wall Street brokerage houses have expressed concern about slowing growth in the PC market. Hickey and Fleckenstein are expecting earnings and revenue slowdowns for the PC companies.