but mergers and acquisitions or not, it's probably going to 150.
that's just the real world, right now.
You nailed that one.
Today LU and ATT scared the telecom sector (yet again), but there may have been some over-reaction. One article on T says:
AT&T said its data and Internet revenue will maintain its third-quarter growth rate of more than 20 percent, and that its Broadband unit is expected to deliver fourth quarter growth similar or slightly better than its third-quarter rate of 10.8 percent.
And the WSJ report on Lucent indicates its problems aren't in fiber optics --- or hopefully aren't:
Lucent blames the first-quarter loss on a softening market. The company said startup phone companies are spending less as they run out of funding, and large, incumbent telecommunications companies are slowing their capital spending as the economy sputters. Sales have dropped substantially in North America.
While there is a softening of demand for legacy switching equipment that both Lucent and chief rival Nortel Networks Corp. (NT) sell, many on Wall Street rightly point out that the problems it faces in the market are unique to the company.
"We believe Lucent's unfavorable customer, geographic and product mix hurt performance," Ken Leon, ABN AMRO Inc. telecommunications equipment analyst, said in a note. "We are hopeful there is no weakness in its optical components business."
Because it missed the shift by telecommunications carriers to OC-192 fiber optic gear, the company has stimulated sales by extending lines of credit to customers. And the emphasis on growing revenue from quarter-to-quarter apparently led members of the sales force to make concessions to customers that the company is now paying for.
If you subscribe to the WSJ, the article is worth reading:
interactive.wsj.com@1.cgi?mfmuse/text/autowire/data/BT-CO-20001221-004871.djml/&d2hconverter=display-d2h&NVP=&template=atlas-srch-searchrecent-nf.tmpl&form=atlas-srch-searchrecent-nf.html&from-and=AND&to-and=AND&sort=Article-Doc-Date+desc&qand=&bool_query=fiber+optics&dbname=%26name1%3Ddbname%26name2%3Ddbname%26name3%3Ddbname%26period%3D%3A720&location=article&HI=
Pat |
