● 05.14.08

●● Novell Starts Buying Its Own Stock (Sign of Weakness)

Posted in Finance, Microsoft, Novell at 3:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

If the investors go away, then someone needs to fill the void

Novell has just earned itself a very low position (48th) in the “most influential tech vendors” ladder, which seems very gut feeling-driven. Almost on the very same day came this press release from Novell:

>

>

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) today announced that its Board of Directors has authorized the repurchase of up to $100 million of the Company’s outstanding shares of common stock.

>

Associated Press (at Forbes) had this to add about the buyback program:

>

>

There is no fixed expiration date for the program.

>

It was almost a year ago that Ron Hovsepian told Reuters about the possibility of buybacks, or at least responded to a question about it. We wrote about Novell buybacks in [1, 2] and some more related posts include [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

We also discussed Novell’s massaging of its financial figures, which may be similar to Microsoft’s [1, 2, 3]. Novell expects layoffs, not just off-shoring that Bill Gates promotes. Both companies share a similar dilemma which is tied to legacy. Microsoft is by all means on a similar boat, with buybacks that left it without so much cash in the bank (far less than ever before). █

Google Trends: search volume for “Novell”

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Permalink  Send this to a friend

----------

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.