<<Unfortunately it hasn't translated into any sort of significant sustainable gains in the stock price.
This darn stock is head fake after head fake since last summer.>>
I would have to agree with you.
MRVC management obviously is not ready to come out and promote their new technologies until they are all in place. These include Fiber Driver (Announced in October), Wireless Fiber Driver (we first heard of in January when it won best of Class in Wireless), AcceleRouter (announced in January), MetroFusion (ships in May), ARANEA (250 GBs, 200M pps, clusterable) carrier class Router (demos in June, ships later in the year), MRVC's Optical Networking family of products (sometime later this year), Series 8000 Router (mid year?). Series 8000 and AcceleRouter are aimed mainly at Enterprises, the rest at the carrier market.
Now, taken as a whole, these products will represent a major advance in Networking technology. Just how much of an advance they aren't saying. This is left for us to figure out (for now). Now why do you suppose this is? I'll tell you what I think.
MRVC's new target customer is Carriers - Telcos, CLECs, ISPs, etc. The Internet is growing by leaps and bounds and the potential carrier market is HUGE (see my posts on trends). The market is larger than the current supplier's capacity to fill the coming demand. Now, carrier buying occurs in cycles, about 18-24 months apart, I think. ASND used the last one to lock up $1-2 Billion in contracts for their GX-550 and CBX-500 ATM WAN switches. MRVC could use this one to big advantage too.
Higher-bandwidth technologies, higher functionality/flexibility technologies, and more cost-effective technologies will sell. How well they will sell depends on how well MRVC executes (sales contacts to carriers, alliances, partnerships, beta test results, etc.). This of course will take time to play out.
This last is the real key. They WILL sell their new products, but the real victory would be in getting a few of the majors to commit. If this were to happen, MRVC would explode upward. I expect the alliances etc to come this year and contracts next year. Like a good poker player, they don't want others to see how strong their hand is, just yet. ASND-CSCC didn't do a lot of talking either, until they had their products in Beta a year ahead of CSCO, and the contracts were about to roll in. The contracts here will not be for $1-2 million either like MRVC's current ones. Add at least one zero, probably 2, if they win big.
Come back next year and you might ride this horse from $15-$40. But I like buying at the $6 level and waiting - I can wait. |
