Repost...FORE...Quote.com
(UPDATE) Takeover Rumors Continue To Swirl Around ATM-Networking Firm Fore
Dow Jones Online News, Monday, March 22, 1999 at 15:50
NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Shares of Fore Systems Inc., a developer of
telecommunications-networking gear based on the speedy "asynchronous transfer mode" technology, climbed again Monday on continued takeover rumors. In afternoon trading, shares of Warrendale, Pa.-based Fore (FORE) were up $2, or 11%, at $19 on volume of over 15 million shares, compared with the daily average of 3.6 million. The shares advanced 17% Friday after brokerage firm NationsBanc Montgomery called Fore an attractive acquisition candidate and touted Fore's technology.
Analysts Gabe Jenkins and Clifton Gray of NationsBanc Montgomery said Fore is the "only remaining pure play" as the voice and networking industries rapidly converge. Both sides are racing to develop gear that can handle voice, video and data simultaneously. Fore has been the subject of many takeover rumors in recent years.
Those rumors have gained steam in recent months after AT&T Corp., Sprint Corp., MCI Worldcom Inc. and other telecom firms have accelerated plans to build next-generation networks based on technologies inspired partly by the Internet. The firms are racing to something called packet switching, messages get broken up into millions of small pieces, or packets that are mixed up and reassembled into intelligible communications at the other end.
To make their packet-based networks, the phone carriers are looking toward asynchronous transfer mode, or ATM, which uses cells that are always the same size. Such uniformity allows a network to carry comingled voice, video and data traffic without sacrificing efficiency. ATM sets up so-called virtual circuits, which help insure that a transmission is reassembled in the correct order.
Copyright (c) 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
|
