Re: trip report

["Daniel L. Weinreb" <DLW@alderaan.scrc.symbolics.com>]

    Date: Sun 19 Jun 88 23:34:59-PDT
    From: TYSON@Warbucks.AI.SRI.COM (Mabry Tyson)

Perhaps I can help out regarding some of the fine points in Don Kaiser's
fine trip report.  Please don't take any of this as criticism; the
report was extremely well done, and Don Kaiser was particularly good at
conveying a lot of detailed information with remarkable accuracy.

One small slip: the group that the report referred to as "the board of
directors" was actually "the top management"; none of the outside
directors was at the SLUG meeting.

    The name is J. Wurts, not Jay Wurts.  

You're both right about this one.  It's John S. ("Jay") Wurts.  He is
generally called "Jay".

	 (I don't remember them stating that they don't have any debts....
    I presume that at any point they have bills that they haven't yet paid
    just as any individual or business has.)

Any company always has some of what are called "short-term liabilities".
When financial people say that a compnay "doesn't have any debt", they
are referring to "long-term debt".  Symbolics's long-term debt is
negligibly small for a company of the size of Symbolics.  In other
words, Symbolics's ability to use debt financing is entirely untapped so
far.  It's like saying that your house is more valuable if you have
essentially no outstanding mortgage, because that means you can borrow
more against the value of the house.

I hope this helps to clear things up.