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Technology Stocks : LHSP: Lernout En Hauspie -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 613 who wrote (2240)	7/7/2000 11:48:02 AM
From: cdtejuan	Respond to of 2467

FYI: juan ---- Lernout stock seen staying at lows pending results By Gilles Castonguay BRUSSELS, July 7 (Reuters) - Shares in Lernout & Hauspie <LHSP.O> <LHSP.ED> will likely linger at five-month lows until the Belgian speech technology company releases second-quarter results, analysts and fund managers said on Friday. Lernout, a maker of speech recognition and translation products, must demonstrate growth in its key U.S. and European markets, excluding recent acquisitions, they said. The company in a filing made late last week with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reported a drop in 2000 first-quarter sales in the United States and Europe, compared to a whopping increase in Korea following an acquisition there. Fund managers said they expected Lernout's share price to hover between $30 and $35 until the release of quarterly earnings. Lernout said second quarter results will be released in early August. Lernout shares on Friday were up $1.65 at $36.53 on the pan-European Easdaq exchange. On Nasdaq L&H shares rose 2-3/8 to 37-13/16 in early trade. Based in the western Belgian town of Ieper, Lernout has seen its stock lose about 20 percent of its value this week after the regulatory filing showed that sales grew in only one country: South Korea. First-quarter sales in Singapore plummeted to $501,000 from $10.4 million in the 1999 period, while sales in Korea skyrocketed to $58.9 million from $97,000. U.S. sales edged down to $19.9 million from $20.15 million, and sales in Belgium fell to $9.18 million from $14.74 million. Other European sales fell to $19.75 million $22.44 million FIGURES VERY DIFFERENT "The figures were a lot different than what they had said in the past," said ING Barings analyst Pierre-Paul Verelst, who cut his 12-month price target for Lernout's stock to $58 from $67. "People are sceptical," he said. "They want to see if the numbers for the next few quarters will be as good as (Lernout Chief Executive) Gaston Bastiaens says they will be." Verelst also cut his 2000 earnings estimate to $0.58 a share from $0.89 previously. He noted that the company is adopting a more conservative approach to account for revenues, bringing it in line with U.S. requirements. "Previously, L&H took as revenues products and solutions that were tested by customers as having ordered them," he said in a research note. "To put it simply, L&H just anticipated future sales." "The founders of Lernout and Hauspie have never been very transparent when it has come to numbers," said Pascal Michez, a fund manager at Puilaetco, who has 3.5 percent of the fund's 80 million euros in assets invested in Lernout. "The level of communication has been bad. "We are going to wait for more (information)," he added. REVENUE OUTLOOK On Thursday, Lernout's Bastiaens said he was comfortable with market estimates of more than $700 million in revenues for 2000 and $1.2 billion for 2001. Revenues in 1999 were $344.2 million. Earlier this year, Lernout acquired U.S. voice technology company Dragon Systems Inc. and U.S. dictation and call center systems maker Dictaphone Corp. Dragon had $61 million in revenues in 1999, while Dictaphone had $350 million. Analysts and fund managers were, nevertheless, optimistc about the longterm potential success of the company's voice recognition and translation products. "Voice technology looks like it is going to be a way of life," one fund manager said.