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

To: SyncMan who wrote (14663)	5/8/2000 4:29:00 AM
From: Neil H	Respond to of 21876

Monday May 8, 4:00 am Eastern Time Company Press Release Lucent Technologies' New Enterprise Networks Group Signs $10M Strategic Global Agreement With Hilton International Future Lucent Spin-off Provides Advanced Voice and Data Solutions to Improve Guest Services and Cut Costs at Hilton International Hotels Worldwide LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 8, 2000-- Lucent Technologies' (NYSE:LU - news) new Enterprise Networks Group -- which will be spun off as a separate, independent company later this year -- today announced a global strategic agreement with Hilton International to supply next-generation voice and data solutions in excess of US$10 million to Hilton International hotels worldwide. The agreement represents an integral part of Hilton International's strategy to lead its industry by offering world-class customer service through the deployment of sophisticated voice and data networking technologies. Hilton International has named the new Enterprise Networks Group as one of its two preferred vendors for the company's global communications standardisation project. As part of the project, Enterprise Networks Group has deployed its leading-edge GuestWorks© hospitality solution at Hilton hotels spanning every continent, including locations such as Greece, the United Kingdom, Venezuela, the Bahamas and Malta. In addition, Hilton International is transforming its global networking infrastructure. Enterprise Networks Group has implemented Lucent's award-winning VPN Firewall Brick in Quito and Guayaguil in Ecuador, Minneapolis in the United States as well as London and Glasgow in the United Kingdom. ``We believe Enterprise Networks Group will help us to create a new benchmark for guest satisfaction through deployment of cutting-edge voice and data solutions that will help increase staff productivity and provide cost-effective network communications,'' said Nigel Underwood, senior vice president of Information Technology at Hilton International. ``This agreement supports our aim of being the most advanced user of IT solutions within the hospitality industry, and together with future initiatives, will be critical in helping us to fulfil this goal.'' ``We are committed to supporting Hilton's exciting vision for first-rate, innovative guest services around the globe,'' said Dave Johnson, Enterprise Networks Group's vice president of Worldwide Sales. ``We are leveraging our worldwide presence and breadth of technology solutions to help Hilton International distinguish itself by offering the most technologically advanced guest services in the hospitality industry.'' The agreement calls for the Enterprise Networks Group to supply a complete GuestWorks hospitality solution -- including the industry-leading DEFINITY© Enterprise Communications Server (ECS) and DEFINITY Wireless Digitally Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT) -- for Hilton International hotels currently being built and to update voice networks and equipment at existing hotels. The GuestWorks solution is an integrated, turnkey communications system for the hospitality industry that incorporates call processing, messaging, phones and services. The solution integrates leading-edge technology that enhance guests communications and hotel network management. GuestWorks system can support hotel properties of all sizes-- providing up to 25,000 voice and data phone lines. In conjunction with solutions from other Hilton partners, the new Enterprise Networks Group solution will enable Hilton International to offer improved guest services -- including programmable automated wake-up calls, message waiting notification, and the delivery of greetings or announcements in the guest's native language -- and to significantly boost staff productivity. Hilton Reservations Worldwide also is using Enterprise Networks Group's CentreVu© Customer Care Solutions to assist customers with making reservations. Customer care centers are based in Japan, Singapore and Belgium. The VPN solution for Hilton International helps transform its wide area network - which previously relied on dial-up networking technology - to deploy a global IP-based Virtual Private Network (VPN) based on Lucent's VPN Firewall Brick, which will securely and reliably connect more than 20 Hilton International hotels together across all continents using an ISP backbone to take advantage of the low cost and productivity benefits of the Internet without compromising on security, reliability and performance expectations. The multi-site secure network is centrally provisioned and managed by the Lucent Security Management Server located in Dublin, Ireland. ``The VPN Firewall solution is ideal for our hotels because of its industry-leading performance, security and high-availability features,'' said Underwood. ``In addition, as we evolve our e-business strategy, the VPN solution will enable us to increase the overall capacity and bandwidth requirements, as and when required by the business, in a very short period of time.'' To date, Lucent's Enterprise Networks Group has outfitted 23 Hilton hotels with the new technology. Enterprise Networks Group and Hilton International will continue to collaborate on the development of leading-edge converged applications in effort to meet the changing needs of Hilton's guests.

To: SyncMan who wrote (14663)	5/9/2000 12:02:00 AM
From: Georgeb	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21876

You have some good points, especially about the misforecasting of the OC-192 market. Having debt however is not necessarily a bad thing. Most major corporations manages a ratio of fixed to floating rate debt in a mix that provides the optimal flow for growth, better than they could achieve without debt. The Company's debt ratio at March 31, 2000 was 24.6%. On September 30, 1999, the Company's debt ratio was 33.6%. The decrease was directly related to the increase in shareowner's equity and the decrease in total debt (Debt ratio is total debt to total capital, i.e. debt plus equity) . One might say that not using any debt is to throw away opportunity, and is a mismanagement. Employee retention is a problem with all of the large technology companies now, because the potential for wealth in a startup stock option plan is very seductive. There has never been a time like now for engineers. Salaries are huge and it is strictly an employees job market. The good news is that the startups are being bought up, and the talent is sometimes put back into the same harness. I see that you work for Cisco, surely you are seeing the same phenomenon. Cisco is a classic example of an accretive company in the way that they create increased earnings (no news to you I'm sure) by buying companies. These deals involve exchanging high P/E stock for lower P/E stock. In essence the company is acquiring more earnings than it is required to issue new stock, thus elevating forecasted EPS. The problem with these accretive deals is that the creation of earnings per share through acquisition may be masking a problem with organic growth with the existing company prior to the acquisitions. Wall Street usually realizes too late about deteriorating fundamentals. So, while a company has a high P/E, it can use this acquisition currency to mask deterioration. Examples where this happened are Snapple and Oxford Health.