Pat, in case nobody has posted any analyst reports, here are some interesting excerpts from the last Dain Rauscher report which came out after the September quarter results. Note that Dain has been an integral player/underwriter in some VERY successful 1999 IPO's, eg WEBT and BRCD:
<< the quarterly book-to-bill ratio was greater than one-to-one. Com21 shipped more than 80,000 cable modems, with 10,000 DOCSIS compliant and the balance based on the company's proprietary ATM implementation. 91 head ends were shipped, up from 83 head-ends in June and in line with expectations. The company now boasts more than 12.6 million homes passed worldwide compared to 11.9 million in June...>>
<,The cable modem market continues to experience robust growth with modem shipments reaching 1 million units by the end of the June quarter 1999 compared to to an initial 1.5 million unit annual forecast which has been revised to 2.0 million units for the year. Com21 continues to command the number three market position with increasing share as customers look to the company for combined data, voice, security and Virtual Private Network ( VPN ) solutions...>>
- the top 4 customers were ATT/BIS, Fuwakawa, Philips and Siemens which combined totaled 54% of CMTO revenue in Sept qtr.
Here's a VERY interesting point of certification:
<< Com21 resubmitted its DOCSIS compatible cable modem for Cable Labs certification after six weeks of testing. The longer window between rounds 10 and 11 gave the company extra time to perform more extensive testing and work more closely with the Cable Labs organization to ensure higher probability of success. Results from the test....are expected by December 12,1999. Certification is an important first step toward providing a complete DOCSIS certified and qualified cable modem solution.>>
<<...while the numbers have been better than expected, the elusive DOCSIS cable modem certification has plagued the stock despite strong results and market share gains. Going forward, gross profit margins should be pressured by the near term Flash memory shortage. Our 1999 and 2000 estimates reflect lower profit margin assumptions on slightly higher revenues. Nonetheless, we believe that Com21 shares continue to be undervalued at less than two times sales. Rapid market growth and strong intellectual property make the company and stock well positioned to perform. We continue to rate the stock Strong Buy-Aggressive with a $40 price target based on approximately 5x calendar 2000 sales, a significant discount to comparable broadband access solutions.>>
Note that the stock was trading at lower levels ( probably low teens ) at the time the Dain analyst wrote this report.
The authors of the report are Thomas Erickson and Sanjiv Wadhwani of Dain Rauscher |
