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Technology Stocks : Alcatel (ALA) and France -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Fancy who wrote (948)	10/21/1999 11:27:00 AM
From: Steve Rolfe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3891

Interview with Krish Prabhu, CNBC, October 13, 1999 By Axel Threlfall and Kate Bulkley Alex Threlfall (presenter): Let's go live to Geneva now where our media editor, Kate Bulkley, is standing by. She's with Krish Prabhu, the Chief Operating Officer of France's Alcatel. Alcatel is currently in the process of transforming itself from an old-style telecoms monolith, so that it can compete with the new Internet-friendly models of it competitors. Kate Bulkley (media editor): We're back here at Telecom 99 for yet another day of this exciting market with all this new technology. One of the things that's really important to remember is that telecoms used to be voice-led. It was all about ccalling people and talking to them; now it's going much more towards data, moving Internet traffic around, whether it be web pages or whatever else. The telecoms equipment manufacturers are having to transform themselves in order to meet this new challenge and opportunity, and of course one of them is Alcatel of France which is a very large company. I've got Krish Prabhu here who's not only the CEO of Alcatel US, but the COO of Alcatel. You have a lot of responsibilies, Krish! Good morning, thanks for joining us. Krish Prabhu (CEO Alcatel US, COO Alcatel): Thank you, Kate. Kate Bulkley: Let's talk about this revolution that is going on. Obviously there's a big switch that's happened, from voice to IP networking. Now Alcatel, in some analysts' minds, missed the boat a little bit - you had a huge profits warning about a year ago. What are you doing to sort of fix that situation? Krish Prabhu: Yes, we're well on track to recovering in terms of our profit and profit expectations. We've well defined a plan that takes us through the end of next year and a lot of our stock options are tied to achieving those plans. Kate Bulkley: So you're incented! Krish Prabhu: Yes absolutely incented, yes! A lot of our growth is going to come from Internet-related technology. We've bought some companies over the last year or so, but we've also bought some very critical technology which is now hitting the market quite well. Kate Bulkley: You say you've bought a couple of companies - I think you've bought more than a couple - five or six...I think it's $7 billion you've spent over the last six months just buying software applications companies. Krish Prabhu: Yes, software and hardware. We've been very picky in terms of companies we pciked up. One key characteristic is all these companies were in the US. We also got some market share in the US through some of earlier acquisitions last year but some of the recent acquisitions have all been technology companies. Alex Threlfall: I had a quick question as well and that is about the deal with Global Crossing. Alcatel has been contracted to maintain the European network in 24 major cities. My question is - everyone is building, maintaining these sorts of networks - how is Alcatel going to make Global Crossing's network stand out in the face of the networks from Vintel and VTS? contd.