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Technology Stocks : Lucent Technologies (LU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Drake who wrote (9909)	10/8/1999 1:46:00 PM
From: William Hunt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21876

THREAD ----- Lucent Technologies Inc. (LU US) was reiterated ''outperform'' by analyst Paul Sagawa at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. BEST WISHES BILL

To: Drake who wrote (9909)	10/8/1999 1:50:00 PM
From: William Hunt	Respond to of 21876

THREAD ---Lucent Technologies Inc. Dow Jones Newswires -- October 8, 1999 DJ Tiny Hi/Fn's Warning Sends Wide Swath Of Shock Waves By Christopher Grimes NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--An earnings warning from Hi/Fn Inc. (HIFN), a small company involved in the hot business for chips used in the networking industry, sent shock waves through the computer hardware market Friday. Hi/Fn - pronounced "hyphen" - said two primary customers, Lucent Technologies Inc. (LU) and Quantum Corp.'s DLT & Storage Systems Group (DSS), had cut back their orders because they already had too much inventory. That news sent high-flying Hi/Fn's shares plummeting. The stock had fallen 32, or 43%, to 42 by midday Friday. It fell 30% Thursday when the concerns were first raised in a Wall Street research note. Worries about swollen inventory at Lucent sent down shares of other chip companies that supply the telecommunications and networking industry, too. Clark Westmont, an analyst at Salomon Smith Barney, downgraded shares of Vitesse Semiconductor Inc. (VTSS) and PMC Sierra Inc. (PMCS) on these concerns. "I am concerned about inventory stockpiling by customers, and Lucent is a case in point," Westmont said. Westmont said there seems to have been a "shortage mentality" over the past few months as companies prepared for the year-2000 transition. "The sky is not falling ... (but) this could lead to an order slowdown." He stressed that there doesn't appear to be a demand problem in the industry, but an inventory management problem at Ascend Communications, which was acquired by Lucent. Companies that sell chips used in telecommunications and networking have been the fastest-growing segment of the rebounding semiconductor sector, and they had the stock prices to prove it. HiFn certainly fit in that category, with its nifty "compression" technology that allows 10 pounds of data to fit into a five-pound bag, as one market observer put it. "If you look at the build-out of the Internet infrastructure, it's being done by equipment from Lucent and Nortel" Networks Corp. (NT), Westmont said. And those companies buy chips from the likes of PMC Sierra, Vitesse and Hi-Fn. Only a month ago, Hi/Fn Chief Executive Raymond Farnham told CNBC that networking revenues had doubled in the first nine months this year, and he expected that trend to continue for four more years. HiFn's stock soared earlier this year: when it reached an all-time high of 151.75 Sept. 8, it was up 542% from the start of 1999. "You can see why (Hi/Fn) was hot and sexy," said one buysider who said he had a short position in the stock. "It's really cool technology, it had all the right buzzwords and a unique patent position." BEST WISHES BILL