this weekend, i was contemplating some spring portfolio cleaning, wrestling with the idea of paring back my position in comverse, but you know, i just may be having a fleeting mid-cap life crisis. perhaps one of you benevolent siberheads can reaffirm the patient long-term perspective, strengthen my resolve, and put me back on the straight and narrow. if you'll allow me to indulge myself, a few musings and stream of consciousness follows in no apparent order. (one caveat, lest i raise the wrath of the "comverted": i'm no trader; it's currently one of my core holdings with purchases back in '93 and '94.)
- following the merger, we're now #3 in the voicemail/message system business after lucent's recently acquired octel comm and northern telecom, yet we dwarf these two telecom giants with a 'mere' $1.1b market cap. we no longer sport a small 'cap' and must now play ball with the big boys. this newly combined company may take a few quarters to get the ball rolling.
- lu and nt are making significant strides into cyber/fiber-space (e.g., nortel's webtone) in which comverse has limited presence and market if i'm not mistaken.
- given the asian debacle back in oct and this year's uncertainty over the boston tech merger, cmvt's stock has lame one-yr and ytd performance, significantly trailing the industry average. given our expected growth rate, i'm dismayed at our lowly p/e of 27.
- from ms investor, institutional ownership is now at an astounding 93.2%(!) which can obviously be read both ways. on the positive, our fy98, fy99, and 5-yr expected eps growth rates are impressive at 22%, 23%, and 30%, respectively. that makes for a nice shrinking forward p/e. |
