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Technology Stocks : John, Mike & Tom's Wild World of Stocks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Pitera who wrote (897)	4/25/2000 7:05:00 AM
From: wlheatmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2850

CMTO....interesting company. thetelecommanalyst.com Peter D. Fenner President and Chief Executive Officer Interviewed by George S. Mack With so much content on the Internet, the big problem is downloading it fast enough to avoid spending all day waiting in front of a computer. You may already have the "fat" pipes that solve the downloading problem courtesy of your cable television provider, who would dearly love to be your Internet service provider as well. COM21 (CMTO) is a leading manufacturer and supplier of broadband access modems to the cable industry. With 12% to 14% of the market, it ranks behind No. 1 MOTOROLA (MOT) and No. 2 MORTEL NETWORKS (NT). The Milpitas, Calif.-based COM21 sells directly to domestic cable operators like AT&T (T) Prime Cable, COX COMMUNICATIONS (COX) as well as internationally to systems integrators like PHILIPS ELECTRONICS (PHG), SIEMENS (SMAWY) and Korea's NEO Telecom. Although COM21 lost 61% of its market value during the technology massacre between March 8 and April 14, the company had a stellar first quarter surprising analysts with a loss of $0.11 a share. Wall Street forecasts were for a loss of $0.21 a share. [THE INTERNET ANALYST ? GEORGE S. MACK] One analyst has you doing $241 million in revenue this year following 1999 when you did just under $100 million. How did you get so big so fast? [Peter D. Fenner] We were very fortunate to get into what we think is probably one of the fastest growing markets ? broadband access. We're in the cable piece of the market. [GSM] Are you in any other areas? [PDF] We also have a wireless division, which has not begun to grow very fast as yet. But it's poised to grow very quickly. [GSM] Cable companies don't generally serve business customers yet. When will you be able to address the business market? [PDF] There area a couple of ways to address the business market. A big piece of that market is telecommuters. I'm not talking about people who are home all day, though they are certainly part of the market. We're looking at the extended day that we all live now. When people go home, they still want to be connected to the same databases they had at work. COM21 systems can be integrated as a part of a virtual LAN over a cable franchise. That way, employees can be connected to headquarters by a private line just like most businesses are. They have a secure connection all the way from their home to their firewall. That's one of our approaches the business market. [GSM] What about office buildings? Vital Statistics Com21 (CMTO) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Market Cap: $708M Shares Outstanding: 21.82M Recent Stock Price: $28.00 (4/19/00) 52-Week High: $84.00 52-Week Low: $10.37 Price to estimated 2000 sales (2.53x) EPS: (Dain Rauscher Wessels) 1999A: ($0.49) 2000E: ($0.62) 2001E: $0.56 Revenue: (Dain Rauscher Wessels) 1999A: $95.7M 2000A: $241M 2001A: $385M [PDF] Cable companies are using fiber to get out to nodes in neighborhoods, so there's no reason for them not to run it into buildings. It's only a question of where their focus has been. You're right, cable companies have not been focused on businesses, but a number of our customers have begun to go after the business market. However, large companies probably are not going to be a big part of the cable solution, because in many cases these companies already have fiber provided by either a competitive local exchange carrier or one of the bypass companies. [GSM] Between the end of 1998 and the end of 1999, you doubled your customer base to 100 customers. Will you be able to do it again this year? [PDF] I don't think we'll be able to double it again this year. What we'll be doing more of is going after major players. We think it's very important to land contracts with the Top 10 worldwide players. [GSM] How is your business spread out among your top customers? Are you top-heavy on any of them? [PDF] None of the top 5 has more than 20% of the business at the moment, I don't think. We're spread pretty evenly across ? Siemens, AT&T, Charter Communications (CHTR) and Philips. [GSM] Are you moving into any new areas now? [PDF] One of the things important to COM21 is what we see as a changing paradigm in the business ? a move to integrated voice and data. We're very much focused on making sure we're at the forefront of that activity. We will be introducing a landline-quality, voice-over-hybrid fiber cable next quarter in Europe. It will connect directly to the public switch telephone network through a gateway interface that we have worked out with one of our partners. It's a significant step ? the first real integrated voice-data service with toll-call quality that I know of in the world.