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Technology Stocks : PSIX up 26.5%, Takeover(?)
PSIX 52.21-1.6%Nov 19 3:59 PM EST

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To: David N. Kunkel who wrote (4636)8/3/1999 1:50:00 PM
From: telecomguy  Read Replies (1) of 5650
 
Hi Mr. Kunkel....first of all there is no real "purpose" behind my posts for Psix as you correctly remembered that I got out at $35 mainly due to the non-improving picture of Gross Margin and general uneasy with the whole Internet sector being over-valued.

I just had some time to look at the recent quarterly report and noted the fact that if you added back the D&A, the true gross margin really has not improved.

It is true that Psix is also spending money to build out additional POP's and transoceanic circuits and there is certainly value associated with that and it may even explain why when you are laying off leased cost and replacing it with the owned bandwidth cost that is "one-hundredth" of the leased circuit cost --- the gross margin still doesn't improve. The question is how much of the non improvement in gross margin is attributable to costs associated with the build-out......I would have expected most of these costs are BELOW the D&A line since they involve network engineers/operators, etc.etc.?

Psix business approach is very complex and certainly there aren't any precedents to compare it to.....it may be that the IP market for Wholesale and Commercial vertical markets simply do not yield the kind of margin required to (1) make absolute profits and (2) throw enough cashflow to maintain the network assets.

One thing I do know about the IP market, it is ruthlessly cut-throat compare to the Telco/PTT world (all because they own the last mile and have monopoly position in many countries) so the question is whether Psix can ever make money even in the long-term with the pricing benchmark that we see where the internet bandwidth/access is being traded off as a loss-leader for market share and or for supporting other business opportunities (advertising, e-commerce,etc.)

If the bandwidth/access becomes a loss-leader and a means-to-an-end for lot of key players in the business, where does that leave Psix other than to somehow transform itself into a good old Telco Carrier which has it's own set of challenges.

I feel that bandwidth/access business margins will be brutal (for example we are seeing incredible pricing competition at the wholesale level in the Telecom world where I can buy 1 minute of voice path from US to UK for under 2 cents US!. Certainly at that price Internet Telephony is a non-starter if it ever was in the first place.

It seems to me that unless you have huge scale and horde of cash, it's going to be difficult to make any money in the wholesale Carrier market whether it's data or voice.

But of course this is only my opinion and who knows what crazy changes will drive the IP market in the next 5 years. All I can say with certainty is that fortunes will be made and fortunes will be lost and there is no guarantee for ANY company treading this unknown digital territory.
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