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Technology Stocks : Scientific Atlanta -SFA- going up ??? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Larry Kagan who wrote (831)	6/10/2000 12:54:00 AM
From: General Crude	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1045

Yes. It has a great future. Lack of interest is bullish. GC

To: Larry Kagan who wrote (831)	6/13/2000 8:55:00 AM
From: Allegoria	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1045

SFA expands manufacturing capacity to produce 5.2 million set-top boxes annually! 12 Jun 18:31 By Johnathan Burns NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Cable and optoelectronic equipment makers say the rush to push more telecommunications and Internet services on consumers should continue to help line their pockets in the quarters to come. Executives with Lucent Technologies Inc. (LU), Scientific-Atlanta Inc. (SFA) and Antec Corp. (ANTC) said Monday during presentations at a CIBC World Markets telecommunications conference here that service providers will need intelligent network components and more versatile devices to make selling bandwidth services more efficient. "We believe the future will be in maximizing management of the bandwidth," said Robert McIntyre, Scientific-Atlanta's chief technology officer. "This is about a network, not just a box." Scientific Atlanta sells transmission equipment and digital set-top boxes, the most visible aspect of its business. McIntyre said the company sees digital set-top box penetration reaching as high as 70% to 80%, based on information it has gotten from cable operators. "We want to continue to drive speed and processing up in our set-top box," he said. Scientific-Atlanta recently announced that it would expand manufacturing capacity to produce 5.2 million set-top boxes annually. McIntyre said video-on-demand will be the next "killer" application to push digital cable sales, and he said the company is working on ways to allow cable boxes to operate as a gateway to home networks. Meanwhile, Antec's Chief Financial Officer Larry Margo said his company is introducing products that push fiber optics closer to the home. Jim Bauer, head of the company's investor relations department, said Antec should benefit from AT&T Corp.'s (T) acquisition of MediaOne Group Inc. (UMG). He said MediaOne is the only cable service provider that hasn't extensively used Antec's equipment. "We hope that changes with the AT&T acquisition," he said. He also said AT&T would reach its goal of 500,000 cable telephony subscribers by year end. "They will meet that if they stay on the plan they have been on," he said. "They'll have millions (of subscribers) by the end of 2001." In the optical domain of networking, Lucent's Dan DiLeo, president of the company's optoelectronics division, said the metropolitan market in urban areas will be the next battlefield for equipment makers. He said service providers will want increasingly sophisticated equipment that will be smaller and require less power. "We're rapidly moving to an environment where we can provide programmable components," DiLeo said. As far as performance thus far in the quarter, he said the division is having "very happy times." And when asked if Lucent would be willing to spin off its optoelectronics business, DiLeo said, "the board (of directors) stays committed to maintain shareholder value and looks at these options." Since the division sells 80% of its components to customers outside of Lucent, he said the company has often wondered if not having the Lucent logo on its products would stimulate even more sales. "We think it could be significant," he said. -Johnathan Burns; Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-2020; johnathan.burns@dowjones.com (END) DOW JONES NEWS 06-12-00 06:31 PM

To: Larry Kagan who wrote (831)	7/18/2000 5:14:06 AM
From: Allegoria	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1045

Hi Larry, I found this article and thought I would post it for general information. SFA has been simply the greatest investment... Good luck, Eric Scientific Atlanta: Sitting Pretty with the Set-Top Box Senior Analyst: Evans Kissi Back in the early 1980s, which might as well be the middle ages as far as cable television is concerned, viewers were told to ask "Where's My MTV"? Today, they might be asking an updated version of that question, "Where's my ITV?" as in interactive television. If interactive television ever does fulfill the forecasts that have been set down for it, Scientific Atlanta (NYSE:SFA ) is all but assured of being one of the companies that benefits the most from the technology. Since the beginning of the year, the company's shares have outperformed every other member of the S&P 500, more than tripling in value. By contrast, the index itself is still down since January 1. Then, on Thursday, partly driven by a bullish price target from Wit Soundview, the stock jumped another $9.13, or 12%, to $85.44. Wit expects the shares to hit $100 and the brokerage firm is enthusiastic about the company's core business of making and selling set-top cable TV boxes. The company is benefiting from a situation straight out of economics 101: Demand is blistering hot for cable set top boxes because they are one of the building blocks of high-speed Internet access and the next generation of cable TV services. Yet there just aren't enough of them to go around. The firm pretty much sells its goods as fast as it makes them. The supply-demand imbalance is expected to last, and that should be very good news for the stock price. Based in Norcross, Georgia, Scientific Atlanta has been building set top boxes for years, but in the last few years, as cable modem Internet access and interactive TV have moved beyond the high-tech buzzword phase and into the commercial marketplace, the business has accelerated. The latest version of the company's products can send and receive signals across fiber optic networks, handle telephone services that are carried across cable lines, provide high-speed Internet access and also supply interactive TV services. Domestically, the company is the second largest maker of television set-top boxes behind Motorola Inc. (NYSE:MOT - Quotes, News, Boards), which acquired General Instrument, the largest maker of the boxes last year. For both Scientific Atlanta and Motorola, there isn't any better a time than right now. According to Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter, forecasts that the cable industry will spend approximately $10 billion to upgrade its networks. The company's customers include cable TV providers like MediaOne Group Inc. (NYSE: UMG - Quotes, News, Boards), Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR - Quotes, News, Boards) and Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX - Quotes, News, Boards), which accounts for more than 16% of sales, is the largest. Time Warner has more than 13 million cable subscribers with analog service, and the company expects that all of them will eventually switch to digital service to take advantage of Internet access and the other services the cable companies are adding to their repertoire. Scientific Atlanta's flagship digital set-top box product, Explorer, is being deployed by cable companies into customers' homes at the rate of 40,000 per week, an annual rate of 2 million. The company expects annual shipments of the product to top 5.2 million by next year. To meet the soaring demand, the company has twice within the last seven months announced expansion in its manufacturing plant in Mexico. In addition, the company recently launched an aggressive campaign to recruit engineers and other high tech professionals. The hot market for the company's products was borne out in the results for its fiscal third quarter, which ended March 31. Scientific Atlanta posted solid top and bottom-line results. Net income for the quarter jumped 83% to $38.1 million, or $0.23 per share, from $20.8 million, or $0.13 per share on a split-adjusted basis, for the same period in fiscal 1999. The Street had anticipated the company to earn $0.20 per share. This was the sixth consecutive quarter in which the company exceeded Street estimates. Third quarter sales rose 38% to $440.7 million from $320 million for the same period in 1999. The sales figure also beat the Street's estimate. Sales of the company's Explorer 2000 experienced a sequential growth of 92% from the fiscal second quarter of 2000. During the quarter, the company shipped over 500,000 of the Explorer 2000 digital set top boxes. Both management and Wall Street analysts are very upbeat about the company's prospects. In a recent meeting with analysts, management confidently said the results for the coming fiscal fourth quarter should exceed the Street's estimates. The optimistic outlook led WitSoundview's analyst Truc Do to reiterate his "Strong Buy" rating and up his 12-month price target to $100. The analyst also raised his earnings estimates for fiscal 2000 to $0.87 per share from $0.84 per share. For fiscal 2001, he raised his estimate to $1.31 per share from $1.16. Bottom Line: Scientific Atlanta has the good fortune of making the right product at the right time. This is one place where momentum investing is still working.