Lenovo Delivering On Its Promises And Outperforming As A Result

My bullishness on Lenovo (OTCPK:LNVGY) hasn’t been the most popular of my calls over the last year, but the company has made real progress delivering on its strategic goals and the shares are up more than 70% over the past year – well above the likes of HP (HPQ), Apple (AAPL), Acer, and Dell (DELL) – and have likewise outperformed strongly since my last update even before the big post-earnings run.

With the progress Lenovo’s made, I feel more comfortable easing up on some of the conservatism I’ve used in my modeling. I don’t think the shares are hugely undervalued, but there is still plenty of skepticism out there and the company has meaningful growth opportunities in its server business that augment a healthy core PC business.

Continue here:
Lenovo Delivering On Its Promises And Outperforming As A Result

Seeking Alpha: The Dell And Market Pessimism For EMC Is Too Much

Buyouts are generally supposed to produce upside for the shareholders of the company being acquired, but that hasn't been the case for EMC (NYSE:EMC) since the company announced its merger agreement with Dell back in October of 2015. While it has indeed been a lousy market for a few months now, EMC's 12% drop since the time of the deal is worse than the performance of the Nasdaq, as investors have grown increasingly worried about the weak performance of EMC's storage business, the poor performance of VMware (NYSE:VMW), and concerns that the deal may not go through at all.

I believe that the deal gets done, but even if it does not, I believe EMC would walk away with at least $4 billion in cash in its pocket and an underestimated PaaS business in Pivotal. I wouldn't expect EMC's reported storage results to improve much until mid-2016, but with a stand-alone value above today's price and very low implied value to VMware, I believe there's still upside in these shares that is worth the risk that the deal unravels.

Read the full article here:
The Dell And Market Pessimism For EMC Is Too Much

Seeking Alpha: EMC Corp Sticking To Its Guns

Right or wrong, EMC (NYSE:EMC) is committed to its path of evolving into a leading provider of "IT-as-a-service". Likewise, the company remains committed to an operating structure that is going to continue to frustrate some investors, as it believes (correctly, in my view) that VMware (NYSE:VMW), Pivotal, and other components are vital to its future strategy.

The problem is that EMC is not delivering all that much right now. Reported margins are unimpressive and the company is on a downward slide in several productivity and inefficiency measurements. I believe that this is a product of the company investing substantial sums today to generate revenue and profits down the line, but I won't deny that there's a strong element of "You gotta just trust me on this..." that does not make for an airtight investment thesis. I continue to believe that EMC is undervalued on relatively modest expectations, but it increasingly looks to me that EMC is at least a year away from being able to deliver the sort of results that will quiet critics and encourage its long-term shareholders.

Follow this link to continue:
EMC Corp Sticking To Its Guns

Seeking Alpha: NetApp's Best Hope Is Probably Its Wallet

Given the operating struggles that are increasingly evident with each quarter, NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) may be best served by thinking along the lines of, "if you can't beat 'em, buy 'em". As is, I think NetApp has painted itself into a corner such that if it doesn't do something significant via M&A, the company is probably done as a real force in storage. Nimble (NYSE:NMBL) and Tintri are chewing on the company, and while Nutanix seems to talk and think more about EMC (NYSE:EMC) and VMware (NYSE:VMW), I can't see how the company's position in hybrid cloud today is encouraging for NetApp.

NetApp longs are not going to like this (and yes, I own EMC shares), but I don't see a very bright future for ONTAP, and I think the company's relative strength in the mid-range market is going to mean less and less with what's happening in hyper-converged infrastructure and hybrid clouds. While NetApp may have more value than the market credits today on the basis of a legacy business (external arrays aren't going to vanish tomorrow), the product revenue growth that the Street generally requires as a prerequisite for bullishness is going to be tough to create. With that, NetApp's best asset may be its nearly $4 billion in net cash and the opportunity to acquire a business like Nimble, Tintri, Tegile, or Nutanix and reinvigorate its positioning relative to where storage seems to be heading.

Read more here:
NetApp's Best Hope Is Probably Its Wallet