I repeat: There will be only two telecom vendors for North America and this combined with two foreign companies. Either SI, ALA or NEC.
That's what I wrote:
To:sylvester80 who wrote (20243)
From: elmatador Friday, Jun 7, 2002 8:34 PM
View Replies (2) | Respond to of 20289
You wrote you bought at 5.30. It dropped. You wrote you bought at 4.70. Now you are writing you'll buy more next week? You are just trying to fool people here.
I repeat: There will be only two telecom vendors for North America and this combined with two foreign companies. Either SI, ALA or NEC.
There won't be a LU as today. There won't be a NT as today
And that's what the Financial Times say today:
news.ft.com
"They are at the point now where it is hard to lay off additional people without handicapping the business," he said. "At the end of the day, there are probably going to be two or thr ee [companies]."
Lucent's woes raise calls for consolidation
By Jonathan Moules in New York and Richard Waters in London
Published: June 13 2002 14:07 | Last Updated: June 13 2002 14:07
The battered telecommunications equipment industry faced renewed calls on Thursday for a drastic overhaul, potentially including mergers, as Lucent Technologies admitted that its revenue s were once again in free-fall.
The company's concession put paid to any lingering hopes that the worst was over for the big equipment makers, sending shares in rivals like Nortel Networks, Ericsson and Alcatel lower .
Lucent had promised that the first three months of this year would turn out to be the bottom for the equipment industry, which has been hit by the rout among the telecoms companies who buy their products.
On Thursday, however, it admitted that revenues were still falling and were now likely to be 10-15 per cent lower in the current quarter than the preceding three months.
At only $3bn-$3.2bn, that will leave the company's quarterly revenues even further below the target of $4bn that it set recently for returning to break-even.
The continuing slide echoes a warning last month from Nortel Networks, which cut its latest quarterly revenue forecast to around $2.75bn, well below its own break-even target of $3.2b n.
Jeff Lipton, senior analyst at JP Morgan, said the continuing slide had made mergers among the biggest networking equipment companies more likely.
"They are at the point now where it is hard to lay off additional people without handicapping the business," he said. "At the end of the day, there are probably going to be two or thr ee [companies]."
Others said that Lucent could continue to slash jobs and other costs, if necessary through a broader restucturing than the one that is currently under way. "You are still talking abou t a rather large business with multiple business lines," said Ted Jackson, senior analyst at USB Piper Jaffray.
Lucent said it had been forced by the latest slide in its revenues to renegotiate the covenants on its bank credit facility, keeping open its access to cash - the second time it has h ad to amend the covenants in less than a year.
The company said it would still meet the terms of the bank deal if it declined to a loss of $350m in ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) in the curre nt quarter, compared with an earlier covenant which foresaw a loss of $50m.
Rather than an ebitda profit of $250m in the first quarter of its next fiscal year, the covenants now foresee a loss of $300m, it added. However, the company said these were not finan cial targets.
Lucent promised "an update on its efforts to reduce its break-even point" at its third-quarter earnings announcement on July 23. The company also warned that it may not be able to mee t its earlier promise to report an improvement from the loss seen in the last quarter.
Don't doubt Elmat. He knows how this thing works. |
