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

To: Mr.Fun who wrote (11889)	12/22/1999 10:07:00 PM
From: Joe S Pack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21876

Mr. Fun, Chuz or any Number guys/gals on this thread: Help me get a bearing on ,as a rule of thump, how much a banker/house gets when they manage a buyout (or a merger) deal? Say, for example, LU wants to buy a company for $1B using their stock as currency? Does it vary from situation to situation? Which filing to SEC specifically spells out these things? Thanks in advance, -Nat

To: Mr.Fun who wrote (11889)	12/22/1999 10:26:00 PM
From: Chuzzlewit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21876

Mr. Fun, I haven't been through the entire 10-K, so I have not yet read comments about the backlog other than from secondary sources. The backlog situation, if true, does not concern me because at worst it is a one or two quarter issue. In fact, considering the Y2K lockdowns in many companies I am not surprised, and certainly not dismayed. Nonetheless, I hear that AR DSOs are supposed to be down another 3-5 days - I hope it is not all due to shenanigans. Considering the way Lucent finances vendors, the forecast decrease in DSO may really be smoke and mirrors because it appears that what LU does is to consider vendor notes as a financing activity (that is, it does not include these items in receivables). My tea leaf reading tells me that LU may require additional financing -- certainly drawing down on its credit facility is a distinct possibilty. And remember, it still has those shelf offerings. In any event, I think this is a much more serious issue than the backlog. In very general terms, the reason I believe additional financing may be necessary is that if LU's growth will be as robust as you predict and if a greater proportion of sales are to European customers there will be a big difference in the timing of the pertinent cash flows. When DSO is much greater than days payables that creates a cash gap for a growing company. The 10-K attributed the increase in DSO to increased sales to European customers who demand more liberal terms. DSO also rises with growth because every quarter is naturally back-end loaded. Credits to Chuzz for getting this more right than me. Not necessary. We are here to help one another in our understanding of the dynamics of our company. TTFN, CTC

To: Mr.Fun who wrote (11889)	12/22/1999 11:04:00 PM
From: PJWUEBBENS	Respond to of 21876

Thank you, Mr. Fun. Once again you have been able to make the gobbledygook of legal/financial jargon somewhat intelligible to someone like me. I am a relatively new investor (3 years) with a disproportionate amount of my retirement funds tied up with one stock, Lucent. Curiously enough, part of the reason for being in this position is some reports made by Mr. Geiling a year or so ago when I was ready to abandon ASND which I had purchased because I had been convinced that LU really needed to acquire this company, only to watch as LU purchased two inferior ATM technology companies. Geiling convinced me to hold on. Yesterday afternoon as I was looking for reasons for LU going downward, I noticed references to JP Morgan. "Hey, that is Greg Geiling," I thought. The first couple references I found did not mention his name. The NT boards had upbeat references to JPM comments on telecom stocks. Then his name appeared, but for the most part, there were only third party reports of what JPM and/or analyst GG said. Finally, we had real quotations which I think your title of "smart ass" is quite descriptive (e.g. the one advice to investors to overweight in NT and CSCO underweight their LU portion.) But, Geiling also made statements about LU becoming the dominant company in the telecom equipment field. He almost made it sound inevitable. I have learned from a reliable source that Geiling is a 23-24 year old guy with lots of promise. My question is how much of what he said is his contribution and how much what we have been hearing is an overlay by some other more senior analyst in the JPM organization. Anyhow, Mr. Fun, YOU ARE THE MAN who is keeping me in LU right now. Thank you. I look forward to the year 2000.

To: Mr.Fun who wrote (11889)	12/23/1999 1:42:00 AM
From: Diamond Jim	Respond to of 21876

re: "No one at Lucent told him anything like that" I hope that doesn't turn out like this: "I was told explicitly that the receivables that were restructured as a finance contract remained on the balance sheet as a note receivable in other current assets. This excerpt completely contradicts that statement" jim

To: Mr.Fun who wrote (11889)	12/23/1999 9:46:00 AM
From: slacker711	Respond to of 21876

Most LU business today is not in the form of multiyear firm commitments, but rather memoranda of understanding that sets price and rough volume targets, but not firm product commitments. As a result most new "contracts" only show up in backlog as the customer places specific product orders under the MOU. This makes backlog an absolutely irrelevant measure. Thanks Mr. Fun......I now have more confidence in those announcements on W-CDMA. It makes sense to do it this way when you are talking about numbers of this size ($10-20 Billion). Slacker