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Strategies & Market Trends : Cents and Sensibility - Kimberly and Friends' Consortium -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SouthFloridaGuy who wrote (99862)	4/24/2000 2:19:00 PM
From: Jack Hartmann	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108040

Puff, maybe this will help on AVNX Avanex Shares Rocket in IPO; Lockup Is to Expire Early By Beth Kwon and Kevin Petrie Staff Reporters 2/4/00 7:44 PM ET SAN FRANCISCO -- Shares of Avanex (AVNX:Nasdaq - news - boards), a supplier of fiber-optic network instruments, boomed as expected in their market debut Friday. Less expected was the Fremont, Calif.-based company's princely arrangement with its investment bankers. Avanex officers, directors and backers won from their white-shoe underwriter Morgan Stanley Dean Witter the right to sell another 11.3 million shares just 90 days after Friday's offering of 6 million shares -- provided the stock still trades at about twice its IPO price of 36. Federal rules will limit the individual sales somewhat, based on average trading volume and the number of shares outstanding. While sometimes warning of concerns among key shareholders, insider selling can also demonstrate strong confidence in an IPO, especially when underwriters allow it to happen before the traditional 180-day lockup ends. By making this unusual adjustment for Avanex, Morgan Stanley has demonstrated a keen eagerness to retain its business. That's a bullish sign. But Morgan also ensured a modicum of safety for other investors in Avanex by stating that the stock must trade at roughly 72 or higher. That way, investors are less likely to suffer from a flooding of unwanted shares onto the public market. Morgan Stanley has found "a very creative way to try to get the best of both worlds," says Craig Columbus, president of InsiderSCORES.com, which tracks insider trading for investors. One person close to the transaction says Avanex is a very special case: "In no way is this typical." Other prized companies have gotten around the lockup before going public, but usually such contracts aren't predicated on stock performance. Officers, directors and backers with Juniper Networks (JNPR:Nasdaq - news - boards) exacted from their underwriter Goldman Sachs the right to unload as many as 16 million shares following the 4.8 million-share IPO in June, before their six-month lockup expired in late 1999. So far Juniper has proved worth the risk. The stock tripled on the first day and then increased fivefold from that level, finishing at a record 170 Friday. Avanex's arrangement appears to be "unique," says Bob Gabele, director of insider research for First Call/Thomson Financial. Avanex is still under pressure to perform. "At least there's a formula here," Gabele adds. "If the stock does well, you can sell more" quickly. Friday was a tremendous start. The stock stunned traders by opening at 170 and jumped up to an intraday high of 200, 456% above its 36 offer price, after raising the price range to 28-30 from 13-15. Avanex finished at 172, chalking the 10th-greatest first-day gain ever, according to Thomson Financial Securities Data. "I expected the stock to trade near 100," says Vincent Slavin, a sales trader who tracks IPOs for Cantor Fitzgerald. "It did tremendously better than I thought it would. I did not expect this extra 87 points." The enthusiasm might say more about the sector than about Avanex, which is still too young to boast much of a track record. The 3-year-old company reported $19.8 million in losses on $10.9 in revenue for the six months ended Dec. 31, 1999. Avanex trades at 943 times revenue, more than 80% of which was booked from one of its financial backers, the long-distance telephone company MCI WorldCom (WCOM:Nasdaq - news - boards). Avanex's technology crams extra signals into each beam of light on a fiber, and transmits those signals at higher speeds and across greater distances. It's appealing because it will feed an industrywide shortage of fiber-optic network components that is only growing more acute, according to executives with suppliers as large as SDL (SDLI:Nasdaq - news - boards) and as small as the private start-up Axsun Technologies. Investors attending the Banc of America Securities Technology Week 2000 conference in San Francisco this week consider fiber-optic instruments the key to easing traffic bottlenecks on the Internet. And few doubt the growth of the Internet. "Bandwidth is an addictive drug," says Catherine Lego, a veteran telecom investor and former board member of JDS Uniphase (JDSU:Nasdaq - news - boards). "It isn't just a drug that cures something once you have it." Lego formed the Photonics Fund in Woodside, Calif., in December and took an early stake in Axsun. That's why investment bankers are wagering that an optical stock such as Avanex will maintain its addictive hold on Wall Street. thestreet.com Jack

To: SouthFloridaGuy who wrote (99862)	4/24/2000 2:20:00 PM
From: SirRealist	Respond to of 108040

unlockdates.com It says August.

To: SouthFloridaGuy who wrote (99862)	5/14/2000 4:27:00 PM
From: 2MAR$	Respond to of 108040

Mo' Money, Mo' Problems...MO' Wishy~Washie:-).... In Jittery Market, Funds Struggle to Put Cash to Work thestreet.com Earlier this month, Robert Loest had what is every fund manager's best friend: ready money. There was just one problem: He didn't have anywhere to put it. The portfolio manager of the IPS Millennium and New Frontier funds had recently sold shares of Internet portal Yahoo! (YHOO:Nasdaq - news - boards), (VRIO:Nasdaq - news - boards) and AskJeeves.com (ASKJ:Nasdaq - news - boards). But with the market slipping from one low to another, he sat on the cash, waiting. At one point, the cash level in the $19 million mid-cap New Frontier reached 28%. Millennium was at about 15%. He finally decided to put a portion of the money into a few large, liquid names. Loest says that in the recent market turmoil he wasn't alone in holding cash. "Buyers just disappeared,'' Loest says. With jittery market players scanning hither and yon for any traces of bear tracks, Loest's predicament speaks volumes. So far, the overall trend doesn't indicate a large-scale push to remove money from the table. Morningstar estimates that the latest numbers, from Thursday, show a 5.05% cash stake for the average domestic stock fund, compared with 5.12% at year-end (The latest numbers reflect varying reporting dates from the funds). But while fund managers say their cash holdings don't yet suggest bearishness, they do suggest trepidation. "People may not actively be raising cash, but they're slower to put new money to work," says James Grefenstette, portfolio manager with several funds from Federated Investors of Pittsburgh. Flows into funds continue to be healthy despite the volatility. In his own funds, Grefenstette says he's slower than usual to put the money back into the market, because he is unsure where it will end up. As a result, the uninvested portion of some of the portfolios has risen to 5%. In the past, he's kept those positions closer to the 2% range. "What's the rush? That's what we're saying," he adds. Other fund complexes have similar experiences. White-hot Janus disclosed recently that some of its most popular funds were sitting on a mountain of cash, with the Global Life Sciences reaching up to nearly 30%, primarily a result of a deluge of new investments. Last week, it closed the Global Life Sciences and the two other funds, due mainly to huge inflows. Cash in all three ranged from 14% to 30%. Firsthand Funds of San Jose, Calif., whose offerings invest in subsectors of technology, shows a double-digit cash balance in the company's E-Commerce offering as of its March 31 disclosure on its Web site. Firsthand didn't return calls seeking comment. The same goes for portfolio manager Tino Selitto, skipper of two Berger funds and co-manager on two others. "In our case, we're not selling positions; we're just not actively looking to buy," he says. His funds' cash stakes range between 1% and 5%. Usually he tries to run closer to 0%. In this unprecedented bull market, it has been extremely difficult to break the cycle of very low cash levels. Indeed, many funds have been punished by outflows for not taking full advantage of the huge returns offered by stocks in recent years. In fact, the standard mantra of many fund complexes has been, "We prefer to be fully invested in the stock market." Portfolio managers are generally skittish to talk about their cash positions because it is an indicator that shareholders and their advisers watch closely. Moving in and out of cash is seen as a proxy for a manager's sentiments toward the market. A large stash indicates a bearish stance. But for managers, timing when to fatten up your cash holdings is perilous business. Just ask Foster Friess of the Brandywine fund. In 1998, Friess moved significantly into the ultra-safe stuff in the midst of the Russian debt debacle and ended up sitting out the Nasdaq surge in the fourth quarter. He underperformed most of his mid-cap growth peers that year. But he stayed fully invested in 1999. Lately, Friess' fund has held up better than others in his category despite a significant weighting in technology. Could Friess be doing a repeat of 1998? It's possible, given that he's up 7.5% year to date, when his peers are averaging a negative 1.7% return. Where are his cash levels? Friess says only that the fund's cash stake is "normal." Not all managers are as likely to take such big bets. The risks are too great with a populace that seems more obsessed with the value of the fund shares than who's going to be the next president. "If you had moved to cash last summer, you would have missed out at the beginning of the fall, when the market ran up over 50%," Selitto says. "I'd hate to have been sitting on the sidelines and seeing that."