CSCO is going shopping for more optics expertise......
Cisco Says It Plans to Buy More Fiber-Optic Makers
New York, Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Cisco Systems Inc., the world's No. 1 maker of Internet equipment, said it plans to buy at least one maker of fiber-optic gear in the next 12 to 18 months to add products to sell to phone companies.
Cisco is looking for equipment that boosts capacity on fiber networks using wave division multiplexing, or WDM, Senior Vice President Kevin Kennedy said. It also may seek to buy products to send voice and data traffic on fiber over long distances.
The new products would help Cisco compete better with Nortel Networks Corp. and Lucent Technologies Inc. as phone companies look to fiber optics to handle Internet and data traffic that doubles every nine months. Cisco started its line of fiber-optic equipment by acquiring Cerent Corp., Monterey Networks Inc. and Pipelinks Inc. this year.
``We'll look for an appropriate time to make an acquisition,' Kennedy said in an interview at the Warburg Dillon Read Telecom Conference in New York.
Cisco shares rose 1/4 to 84 3/4. Shares of JDS Uniphase Corp., the world's biggest maker of parts for fiber-optic equipment, rose 4 7/8 to 199 7/8.
Kennedy said San Jose, California-based Cisco is evaluating both startups like Cerent and more established WDM makers such as Ciena Corp. He declined to name any companies it has considered.
``We're looking at all possibilities. They all have their trade-offs,' he said.
Linthicum, Maryland-based Ciena, with sales in fiscal 1998 of $508 million, has been mentioned in the past as a possible target for Cisco. The company declined to comment last week on speculation that it was in talks with Cisco.
A chart comparing CUBE to the optics companies.....
siliconinvestor.com
CUBE has done better than CIEN or GLW
HLIT and other optical co....
siliconinvestor.com
Conclusions
The optics sector is hot, CSCO will keep it that way.
We are lucky that DIVI will get moved to this sector.
Will tuck my HLIT away in a drawer, and be very glad, as I have wanted to get into the optics market for a long time. But cannot bring myself to buy more HLIT. Will add a few CIEN today for my optics portfolio. |
