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

To: hdl who wrote (2287)	8/11/2000 9:53:29 AM
From: cdtejuan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2467

FYI, from yahoo´s shortsleavewhileyoucan -------- Dow Jones Newswires Analysts Bullish On Lernout & Hauspie Despite Turmoil By MARTIN BOER Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES BRUSSELS -- Despite a turbulent week for Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products NV (LHSP), Belgian analysts remain optimistic about the speech technology group. Analysts see shares in the company more than doubling in the coming year and expect earnings to rise sharply from the fourth quarter onward. Shares in Lernout & Hauspie have plunged 24% since Tuesday after an article in the Wall Street Journal called into question sales earned by the company in South Korea. The group also released weak second-quarter earnings, which were hurt by accounting changes resulting from the group's acquisition of U.S. voice technology group Dragon Systems and call center systems maker Dictaphone. Lernout & Hauspie said net income before goodwill and exceptional items was $7.1 million for the quarter, or five cents per share, down from 15 cents per share in the second quarter of 1999. Then a class-action lawsuit filed by disgruntled shareholders in Philadelphia on Wednesday, claiming Lernout & Hauspie issued false and misleading statements about its financial conditions, topped off what had already been a bad week for the company. On Thursday, Lernout & Hauspie shares ended 7.2% lower at a mid-price of $28.085 on the pan-European Easdaq exchange. The shares closed at a mid-price of $36.875 on Monday. In mid-March, they were at $70.50. At about 0940 GMT Friday, the shares were trading at $29.300. On the Nasdaq Thursday, the shares ended at a mid-price of $27.500, up from Wednesday's close of $26.750. But Belgian analysts continue to rate the stock a "strong buy" and stress that fundamentally nothing has changed this week for a company. Kurt Janssens, who follows the stock at KBC Securities, has retained his 12-month price target of $80.00 on the stock. He expects net profit and group sales to rise sharply in the fourth quarter. "We maintain our confidence in the company and its strong growth prospects," he said. Janssens expects full-year earnings per share to rise to $1.18 per share in 2001 compared with 55 cents in 2000 and 61 cents in 1999. He says Lernout & Hauspie remains the biggest player in the fast-growing sector of speech, artificial intelligence and language with a market share of 10%. "There are so many parts to the sector, so many different technologies that Lernout & Hauspie has no big competitors," he said. U.S. competitors Nuance Communications Inc. (NUAN) and SpeechWorks International Inc. (SPWX) trade at 12-month price/earnings ratios of 236 and 181, respectively, he said. Lernout & Hauspie trades at around 25 times KBC's earnings projections. The analysts also see growth opportunities in health care, automotive, legal, financial and consumer retail markets. Fortis Bank's Patrick Michielsen said his 12-month price target remains at $61 per share, and he raised his earnings per share estimate for 2000 to 62 cents from 59 cents. Michielsen said Lernout & Hauspie must prove to the market that its sales are beginning to accelerate. "They have to show from the fourth quarter on that their product is being well-perceived by potential customers," he said. "We expect good news." Lernout & Hauspie Chief Executive Gastons Bastiaens said the group is about to take a leading role in the corporate market for telephony services - especially those integrated into the internet. "What we have seen is that speech and language technology has come to life. We have been able to reposition ourselves as the leader in this business," Bastiaens told Dow Jones Newswires in a phone interview. Bastiaens sees "sizable" upside potential in the call center business. Lernout & Hauspie offer services that monitor the quality of such centers through audio mining. He points to voice portals as another exciting area with more and more users expected to want to surf the Internet via spoken commands. The group is also perfecting various applications - like interactive voice response systems and directory services - and technologies for intelligent content management. In doing so, Bastiaens predicts that the group will realize a substantial deal flow in the second half of 2000. He sees the biggest growth in Europe and in the U.S., especially among corporate users. He expects the U.S., by the second half, to account for 40% of group sales. Europe and Asia should account for another 30% each. ---- slwyc : as far as i know this is the first major newswire article raising the relative valuation discrepancy with freshly IPOed NUAN and SPWX greetings slwyc