Jach,
Of note here is that Argon's product is not shipping and likely will not be shipping any time soon. To classify it as a Cisco killer might be a stretch. Argon took 200 mil and had 30+ mil in investments, whereas Castle took 300 mil and had 18 mil in investments...this could be an indicator in the state of the products. Also, since siemens has no pooling of interests ability, they need to pay cash and vest all of the shares at the closing of the deal. Time will tell what happens here, but the nature of the engineers at these places is highly entrepreneurial and unless there are huge retention fees, (40 mil stated for argon), there may be difficulty keeping the engineers.
BTW, I posted this earlier in the week..on the ASND thread.
From: Brian Dodge Tuesday, Mar 2 1999 12:25AM ET
Reply # of 60224
Several of these companies are in my neck of the woods. they have good engineers (Sonus and Castle have a number of ex-Cascade/Ascend employees). What cramer does not mention is that LU's acquisition of ASND gives them a productline that does compete directly with the space that Castle is pursuing. ASND's acquisition of Stratus gives them the direct IP and ATM to SS7 architecture. Of note is that Siemen's purchased Argon Networks a week ago and has openly stated that they are in the hunt for 2 more here. Likely targets could be Castle, Sonus, Redstone or Xedia. It is likely that a number of these will be added as future components to CSCO/LU/ERICY/Siemens etc.
In keeping with recent tradition, it is not likely that these companies will spell trouble for a LU or CSCO but will be assimilated.
Just an opinion.
Regards,
Brian |
