Max,
This group was compiled awhile back from various bits and pieces of reading on Fiber Optic Metro companies:
stockcharts.com|B|g
Note - you can click on any of the little charts and will then get a "Gallery View" which is charts for 5-day, 5-month, & 2-years....and can then tweak to show your favorite indicators.
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One of the articles regarding metro is here: (written 4/20/01)
moneycentral.msn.com
~~snip of the metro part~~
“Metro access” infrastructure is now the name of the game, not long-haul transport. “During the past two years, the industry was building out the core, or the backbone,” says Tang. “But the metro space is the next bottleneck. Metro is the next big wave.” In short, telecom carriers need to beef up local access to bring more customers on line, so they can make money off those long-haul investments.
Business in this corner of the optical world is indeed booming. For example, ONI Systems (ONIS, news, msgs) -- one of the leading suppliers in the metro space -- beat estimates this week and laid out a positively rosy scenario in its conference call. That had analysts bumping up guidance. The stock rose sharply to the $38 range on the news.
Other signs of demand: Verizon (VZ, news, msgs) recently told analysts it has a backlog of unfilled orders because of limited capacity in its metro and local access networks. And Nortel says it expects metro spending to increase by up 40% to 50% next year, albeit off a small base.
Besides ONI Systems, a smaller company with excellent exposure to the metro spending trend is Optical Communication Products (OCPI, news, msgs). Just be aware that Cisco -- which has its share of problems right now -- accounts for an enormous 35% of revenue. Next, Wit Soundview analyst Kevin Slocum believes Finisar (FNSR, news, msgs) will become “the JDS Uniphase of the metro access market.” Finisar gets a lot of its revenue from sales in the data storage market as well, which analysts believe will return to health once the economy picks up. Stratos Lightwave (STLW, news, msgs) also has good exposure to the metro space.
Companies with mixed or little metro exposure include:Corvis (CORV, news, msgs), Avanex, New Focus (NUFO, news, msgs) and JDS Uniphase. These companies maintain there will be a pickup in long-haul spending. We’ll get to the important matter of when in a moment.
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Unfortunately I can't find the article which mentions the other Metro Fiber players....maybe can dig it up later.
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