Brad, I started buying CORV today. Of all the longs I've taken this past week, I think I'll hold CORV longest, into 2002. CORV is founded by Dr. David Huber who also founded Ciena. While at CIEN, he was the chief scientist/chief technolgy officier, but not CEO, the VCs preferred to bring in an outside person to run the company. At CORV, Dr. Huber is the Chairman/CEO.
Dr. Huber is no doubt the pioneer in the field of optical communications.
CORV is where CIEN was a few years ago when I first knew about the company. There're so many similarities. It's deja vu.
Currently CORV is the only company in the world with an all-optical switch that's been deployed commercially, well ahead of LU, NT, sorta reminded me of a few years ago, when CIEN was the first to the market with its OC-8, OC-16, OC-48 etc DWDM, beating out Lucent.
Currently CORV has 3 customers: Broadwing, Williams, and Quest, sorta reminded me of CIEN with 1 major customer: Sprint.
The VCs investing in CORV are the same who put money in CIEN.
CORV had rev of $46 million last Q, similar to CIEN's $50 million rev in its first quarter as a public company.
CORV has backlog of almost $600 million, on contract commitments from Broadwing, Williams and Quest, sorta reminded me of CIEN with few hundred million $ of commitments from Sprint.
CORV has $1 billion in cash, CIEN had a lot less though
There were plenty of skeptics and critics (I was one of them, but I din't know any better then) of CIEN for its limited products and highly concentrated customers, same arguments are directed at CORV.
Broadwing announced yesterday the completion and initiation of the eastern optical ring of its all-optical network, the world's first. The western and central rings will be completed in 6 weeks. The world's first all-optical network uses CORV's all-optical switch. There's currently no competition for CORV's optical switch, sorta reminded me of CIEN of its DWDM products at the time.
CORV's current market cap is about $3 billion, sorta reminded me of CIEN's $5 billion market cap when it came public (Of course the difference here is CORV came public with a $30 billion market cap last year, what a joke!)
So I think if you want to be an investor in all-optical networking, which may be the standard in the future, CORV may be the right one to buy and hold.
For me, I only need 1 reason to become a shareholder: Dr. David Huber.
Regards,
Tom
PS: recent lock-up release and the crash of optical illusion stocks have put a severe damper on CORV stock price, which is a blessing for new investors. |
