Gary, SI, and all, has anyone heard of Ascend floating a bond? I follow this thread everyday, haven't seen any mention of this. Checked the Yahoo ASND thread first time last night, and found this:
messages.yahoo.com@m2.yahoo.com
>>Subj: Len - Wouldn't float a bond if negotiating
a buyout
By: mcammarata
Date: Jan 2 1998 7:45 P.M PST
Reply To: Msg. 3804 by lcLen,
That would be my view, if you really are trying to sell the company (I doubt it), then you wouldn't be preparing to float a bond to raise cash. What can one do with that cash, well it's needed to buy some smaller companies. However, ASND already has a good deal of cash. So maybe they will announce a stock buyback and the acquisition of some small companies. Something to this effect has recently happened at Amgen. They had plenty of money for R&D but the stock cratered so they announced a big stock buyback. Then they are floating a bond to pay for general corporate purposes (ie. R&D). So, in effect, what they really did was use their regular cash for the R&D as planned, but have floated a bond for the purpose of a stock buyback, without people thinking the bond is related to the buyback. Interest rates are very low right now, if you believe in your business and your company, acquire that which you need to acquire and use the rest to buy back stock thereby increasing EPS. Of course, last time they started to float a bond they yanked it last minute when they started talks with Lucent. The street picked up on this and bid up the price beyond where Lucent was willing to pay. So the Lucent talks are off and the bond issue is back on the front burner. If that issue gets suddenly cancelled again, it might mean something. However, I'm not expecting anything but a long slow strong recovery, don't build in takeover expectations, too risky a game to play despite PeterGreens puppeting of the Maria rumors.
Later
Mike Cammarata
View Replies to this Message
ASND Quote
<< |
