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good ol ASND...1&2&3&4...on your marks...get set...ready...and go...we'll find out on 4/13 if ASND sweeps the floor!
Ascend First Quarter Tops Estimates
(04/09/98; 5:45 p.m. EST)
By Gabrielle Jonas, TechInvestor
Ascend Communications reported Thursday first quarter earnings of $52.37 million, or 26 cents a share, on revenue of $305 million.
Wall Street was expecting earnings of 25 cents a share.
The first quarter results compared with a net loss of $163 million, or 88 cents a share, on revenue of $292.7 million in the comparable quarter a year ago.
Ascend [ASND] has led investors on a bumpy ride with a 52-week low of 22 and a high of 60. The networking company's shares have bounced all over since it acquired Cascade Communications.
Ascend's $3 billion buyout of Cascade was aimed at positioningAscend against networking market leader Cisco by strengthening its position in access concentration, backbone switching, and IP switching.
For the first quarter, Ascend's revenue grew sequentially by 4.3 percent, and operating income grew 10.1 percent.
Mory Ejabat, president and CEO, said the quarter was fueled by "strong financial results and key customer wins, combined with continued new-product introductions."
The most recent such win was for a nationwide frame/ATM backbone network for GTE.
The company's access-switching unit, Ejabat said, showed strong growth driven by demand in North America for the MAX TNT access platform.
"We also saw a pickup in demand for our DSL [digital subscriber line] products, with our CLEC [competitive local exchange carriers] customers being the early adopters of this technology," Ejabat said. "Our strength with the large network service providers has allowed us to maintain market share leadership in access concentration over the last five quarters, as measured by the Dell'Oro Group."
The core systems business unit did well, too, Ejabat said, with a sequential increase in sales of backbone infrastructure to large network service providers in European and Asian-Pacific markets.
Ascend also saw an increase in frame relay sales.
For the rest of the calendar year, Ejabat foresees a continuing "strong demand for capacity in the network backbone, with ATM clearly emerging as the network architecture of choice."
"We also expect that growth from the consumer segment, driven by both new subscribers and increasing connect times, will drive demand for access ports," Ejabat added. "We believe the market opportunities are significant, Ascend is well-positioned within those markets, and our strategy is sound."
There was a particularly strong demand for access ports in North America during the first quarter, Ejabat said.
ROCK & ROLL ASND! |
