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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (30855)	1/2/2000 11:39:00 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 77400

Nortel and Lucent should sell their assets to Cisco and invest the proceeds in CSCO. Years ago I advised AMD to sell themselves to Intel and invest the proceeds in INTC. It is obvious now to everyone that this would have been a winning play. I daresay, in a couple of years the LU and NT owners will be whining. Remember, you saw it here first. There's just a bare chance that either Lucent or Nortel could be acquired by Cisco without annoying the AT authorities. It's sort of a Prisoner's Dilemma. The first one can be bought at a premium. The second will have to be sold at a distress sale. My candidate is Nortel. At least Cisco would not have to lay off a lot of good, successful employees. Most of them have left.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (30855)	1/2/2000 12:20:00 PM
From: RetiredNow	Respond to of 77400

Well, that's not exactly what we are saying. You said that margins will improve when Nortel and Lucent get into data networking. Well, how is Nortel supposed to improve margins by cutting prices and licensing it's router technology? In marketing 101, that is known as the last desperate move. You're always supposed to try to compete on anything but price. In addition, Telecomguy keeps saying that Nortel is in the software business. If they really were a software company you'd see outstanding margins. But the reality is they are terribly vertically integrated. I wouldn't be surprise d if they raised the chickens that they cook in the cafeterias for their employees! As far as Cisco's margins decreasing, we all know that. Cisco has even warned of that consistently in their 10Qs and 10Ks. However, when Nortel, Lucent and Cisco's margins ALL start to decrease from competition with themselves and all the little startups, who do you think will suffer first? The company with the most cash and highest profitability has a lot more breathing room than companies with large debt and zero profitability. That, my friend is the importance of operating cashflows. If you can't understand that, I recommend a Finance or Accounting 101 course. And I am not being sarcastic here. I recommend that to everyone trying to understand how to read financial statements and value companies. And BTW, Kenneth. Short term I still believe all three will do well. But this is also a marathon. Cisco is best positioned to last out the marathon. These are my opinions but only time will really tell.