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Technology Stocks : Wi-LAN Inc. (T.WIN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: P2V who wrote (1307)11/30/1999 7:52:00 PM
From: SurfForWealth  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 16863
 
Mardy, thanks for the enlightening comments. Your opinion is much appreciated and respected. This is getting very interesting. Like many others, I can't help but think that Cisco is at great risk here, playing hardball and is starting to show they are very concerned about WIN. I had a much needed laugh when I read Hatim's comment from the FP today. "It's nice to know we can make a $300 BILLION company jump." He is just too relaxed IMO and that bodes well for us share holders. LOL Call me crazy but I think CSCO will eventually make a deal (licensing) with WIN. Cheers!!!



To: P2V who wrote (1307)11/30/1999 11:00:00 PM
From: axial  Respond to of 16863
 
Mardy - Boy, we're sure getting some excellent posts. I haven't had time to properly research the reception/antenna issues raised by the VOFDM question, so your insight is greatly appreciated.

As we approach the meeting, I am pleasantly surprised to see that Wi-LAN's price, and investors, have held up well. The speculative excess has been bled from the stock price, and it's holding its ground.

More important, the tone of the investors: confident.

Just a small addition to the wonderful comments made by others:

A while ago, I posted my first attempt to run some numbers on Wi-LAN: difficult to do, because we don't know the terms of any of Wi-LAN's deals. I've revised it slightly, but I'm doing it again, because I think the importance of this weekend's meeting obscures this fact:

Regardless of the outcome of this meeting, Wi-LAN will be an immensely profitable company.
____________________________________________________________

The members of the HAVi consortium presently include Philips, Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Thomson Multimedia, Hitachi, Grundig and Toshiba. Worldwide sales total in the tens of billions of dollars.

HAVi will enable the effortless interaction of home audio-visual devices, including computers, with a data transfer rate consistent with the IEEE 1394 standard. No wires, beyond the power plug. It "future proofs" all equipment embracing the standard, which will come out in the 1.0 version January/2000.

Suppose this is fiscal 2001-2002, and each of these companies has been selling HAVi devices for a year. Suppose each has sold 2 million devices, world-wide, in that time (a safe, low estimate). Each of these devices will incorporate a Wi-LAN transceiver; let's say Wi-LAN gets, net, $10 for each transceiver - another safe, low estimate.

That's 8 companies x 2M devices = 16 million devices.

That's 16M devices x $10 = $160 million, net, to revenue.

Assume, by then, that Wi-LAN has 50 million shares.

That works out to $3.20 EPS based just on HAVi, and ignoring any other wireless revenue.

With a P/E of 20, that gives a $64 share price, based just on first year HAVi sales, ignoring all other revenue.

Revenue from HAVi will increase quickly in the following years, as it becomes the de facto home wireless A/V standard.
Unit costs for transceivers will drop, but volume will rapidly increase.

If you add in revenue from other known streams, you should be looking at $5+ EPS in f2001 - 2002.

This guesstimate is conjecture - but it's a very safe set of numbers.

So, regardless of the outcome of this weekend, can anyone see why Wi-LAN will not be $200/shr. in 3-4 years?

FWIW,

Jim



To: P2V who wrote (1307)12/1/1999 12:33:00 AM
From: wonk  Read Replies (4) | Respond to of 16863
 
Marden:

I've been following this thread since the subject first came up over at Last Mile.

Certainly all the long time holders of the stock have reason to feel good given the notice the company is now receiving - not to mention the price appreciation.

However, permit me to express a cautionary note.

You wrote:

...Time will tell -- if Cisco's VOFDM products are in violation of Wi-Lan's WOFDM Patent(s), but it is my belief that, this patent issue, is not really of any great importance.

IMO, the patent issue is a critical issue and, to be quite frank, there is no way, on public message boards, to determine the value and criticality of Wi-Lans's intellectual property.

One can go over to the US patent office and do a keyword search using "OFDM" on patent abstracts.

128.109.179.23

Specify 1976-1999 in the database contents selection box.

One receives 55 hits.

Hatim defined wideband as

...Also, I am not certain that DMT had any intentions of being wideband. We gave a number of definitions of wideband in our patent. These definitions include: 1. if bandwidth occupied is wide enough that the propagation channel is frequency selective meaning different subchannels are subjected to different channel characteristics, or 2. if the subchannels are far enough apart from each other that an implementation can be made without discrete (rf hardware) carrier recovery. #reply-11767636

Depending upon one's point of view, point number one is either a foundation principle or so vague as to be unenforceable. I certainly don't know the answer.

The bottom line is this. OFDM in all its flavors has been in development throughout the 90s. The European digital broadcasting standard is based upon OFDM. Equipment has been manufactured and systems are on the air. Lots of people have had a role in baking this pie, so its not necessarily proper to characterize the situation as a Cisco / Wi-Lan face-off. But the patent is still important since this is the foundation of the potential revenue stream from products manufactured in compliance with IEEE 802.11a - not to mention other future products and applications yet unknown.

FWIW

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