Dennis, many thanks for the very bullish Bernstein and Cowen reports on the ASND News Only thread. djane
A few tasty excerpts: "Ascend is winning lion's share of new carrier contracts for ATM/Frame Relay
networks - deployment is underway at AT&T, NTT, Brooks Fiber, Williams Telecom,
and Bell Atlantic, with potential new contracts at SBC, Sprint, and several international
carriers could be awarded over next 2-3 months. Because switching costs are
prohibative [sic] and frame relay service growth is strong, these carrier ATM/Frame Relay
contracts will become 3-5 year annuities as the initial 12-18 month deployments yield
future sales for network expansion. Thus current wins are indicative of strong long-term
growth potential and a greater predictability for performance in future quarters."
"Members of Ascend's gold-plated remote access customer list -- UUNet, PSINet,
EarthLink (Sprint), GTE/BBN, AGIS, NTT, France Telecom, Deutche Telecom,etc. --
are unlikely to defect to competitors, given substantial switching costs such as retraining
customer service engineers and rewriting customized billing/security software. As such,
Ascend is likely to represent lion's share of high-end access concentrator market as
Internet industry consolidates." |
