Leo business in the U.S. had fallen at least in the first quarter. That says nothing about market share but if the overall market is shrinking then does it really matter if GEMS % has grown? Maybe. The thing is that GEMS is a multinational company. Recent contracts include a $31 million deal in one Chinese province. Glenayre will get it's share of business here but the real growth is coming overseas. Here is an excerpt from the first quarter's earnings. Regards, Jeff
Commenting on the first quarter results, Gary Smith, president and CEO of Glenayre stated, ``Shareholders should be heartened by the overall strength of the non-U.S. paging businesses. Despite the fact that our combined U.S. one and two-way net sales were off 33% as compared to the first quarter of 1996, the company managed an overall net sales growth of 18%. Figuring strong in the increased net sales were international paging which was up 88%, Integrated Network group which
increased 212% and the Wireless Interconnect group which grew 72%.
Smith continued commenting on the company's overall performance, ``This new growth does not however come without an associated cost. As we have expanded our global presence and pursued our non-paging businesses, the costs of doing business increased to assure the quality of service and the coverage that Glenayre customers expect the world over. Glenayre took cost reduction measures in the first quarter associated with the decreasing domestic business and will continue to evaluate tradeoffs in cost structures where they make sense.
``In summary, we are pleased that we have taken steps to move toward balancing the revenues of Glenayre's paging and non-paging businesses, and we continue to increase our international presence, thus making us less reliant on the U.S. paging markets. In fact, our U.S. paging business, which constituted 63% of net sales in first quarter 1996, represent only 35% of net sales in first quarter 1997,'' Smith added. |
