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Technology Stocks : Catapult Communications Inc (CATT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tourist who wrote (55)	7/1/1999 1:59:00 AM
From: Tourist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 184

More info on the visit... There are about 45 people in the Mountain View office, about half are developers. Again, personnel growth is on par with revenue growth and should reach 100 (world wide) or so by year end. 3 new positions were posted on 6/25, including NorthEast Regional Sales Engineers (http://207.53.128.23/catapult/jobpage.asp?id=5000NE). Expansion and getting close to customers nationwide and worldwide is definitely high on the list. Acquisitions. Obviously if any were in progress, they could not disclose it. Nothing should be ruled out was the comment made. To acquire others, that is. Didn't sound like they wanted to be acquired though. One reason for becoming public was so acquisitions could be more easily made. Bottom line is they are looking at other companies, private and public. I asked about technology protection since it is software. I was assured that the complexity of the code would a barrier to entry for others who try to copy or compete. CATT stays in close touch with customers to understand immediate and future needs. Current plan is to stay very direct in marketing although they do get a fair amount of referral business. For those who do not have a clear picture of the purpose of CATT's products, they are essentially tools to help telecom companies develop their own products. Most of the bigger companies have their own testing groups that would develop their own testing equipment. But as the demand for new products keeps on increasing, outsourcing is one way the big companies are counting on to decrease product development time. Many big companies have several groups, all of which may need CATT's products. Typical orders are in the hundreds of thousands (someone please correct me if i didn't get this right). The last conference call had several hundred people, mostly institutions. Didn't sound like individuals knew too much about CATT then, and maybe not now still. I'd bet a lot more individuals will listen in on 7/14 though. After all the IBD exposure, interest has certainly picked up. The market that CATT is in is very fragmented, a lot of competition is with internal test groups of big companies. Customers have not demanded Windows-based test systems yet. When they do, CATT will devote more resources to that. The offices were neat and clean and everyone seemed very mature. That is, i don't get the feeling that anyone is in it for just the stock options. Turnover rate is low and Joan (ex-CFO) was really the only management personnel that left. A search for new CFO is on-going, obviously. They are doing fine with the finances in the meantime. Ok, that's all for now. Most of this is probably not new but one thing is clear, CATT is around to stay and is fundamentally as strong as any company could wish to be. Quarter-to-quarter earnings will still fluctuate but the company is dedicated to growth and delivering superior products so year-to-year earnings will likely to increase handsomely. Comments? Paul tsuoying@hotmail.com