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

To: A.L. Reagan who wrote (2293)	8/11/2000 4:37:51 PM
From: cdtejuan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2467

i don´t pay for herpes either, but thought someone might have posted it on yahoo...wrong!. sorry FYI: ---- Lernout & Hauspie won't sue WSJ, to request correction By Irene Tham Friday, August 11 2000 Gaston Bastiaens Lernout and Hauspie CEO SINGAPORE--Belgian speech recognition specialist Lernout and Hauspie (L&H) maintained that it will not sue The Wall Street Journal despite the latter's "factually incorrect" and "unfounded" reports about L&H. L&H CEO Gaston Bastiaens said: "We don't need to talk about suing here. In any case, we are going to 'talk further' with The Wall Street Journal to make it clear that the article written is absolutely incorrect...and we would request them to correct that." He was speaking in a 10-minute conference call late Thursday from New York. On Tuesday, the Journal (and its Asian edition) ran an article on L&H raising questions about discrepancies in the latter's claims of sales to some customers in South Korea, as well as its Korean customer base. The Journal's reporters had contacted 18 Korean companies L&H had previously claimed as customers. Three said they were not L&H customers and another three said that their purchases from L&H were less that what the company had reported. A seventh company also revealed that it was not a customer but had a joint venture with L&H which generated less sales than L&H had claimed. Among those L&H included as clients were Korea Securities Computer, Samsung Securities, LG Electronics, Hung Chang Corp, Hyundai Securities and Hanvit Bank. Shortly, L&H released a statement to refute the (Journal's) report, saying that citings from its Korean customers were "misquoted" or were "factually incorrect" and that other information in the article was "distorted". However, Bastiaens did not elaborate on these alleged inaccuracies. When asked what L&H would do if the paper refused to retract the article or make corrections, Bastiaens said: "We are confident that they have to retract the article or in any case correct it. We can also prove that their information is incorrect." After the Journal's report on Tuesday, L&H's Nasdaq shares tumbled 19 percent to US$29.81 when the market closed. The company's shares fell on a second consecutive day by 10.3 percent on Wednesday to US$26.75. To this, Bastiaens said: "At the same time, we will also take steps towards the market and shareholders to show very clearly that all the revenues in Korea are correct. These steps include inviting shareholders and analysts to visit L&H's customers and view the company's revenue reports". "Our information is absolutely accurate. They are checked by auditors," Bastiaens claimed. "We are very confident that we will regain the confidence of the investors because we have a solid business (in Korea)." Huge windfall in Korea questionable Also on Tuesday, L&H reported a net loss of US$33.7 million for the second quarter ended June 30 compared with a net profit of US$9.6 million in the same period a year ago. L&H's sales, however, more than doubled to US$155 million, of which US$68 million came from Korea. Sales from Korea for this second quarter jumped 62 fold from US$1.1 million in the same period last year. For the first quarter of this year, L&H's sales from Korea jumped 607 fold to US$58.9 million from US$97,000 a year ago. This tremendous surged in revenue from Korea occurred despite a 27 percent sales dip to US$51.8 million for the rest of the world in this first quarter, the Journal reported. L&H's Bastiaens explained that the company's success in Korea was contributed by its acquisition of Bumil Information & Communication, a high-tech firm, last September, the paper said. Although Bumil then had quarterly revenues of only about US$3 million, L&H claimed that Bumil allowed L&H to gain access to many Korean firms. In the past 12 months, L&H shares had more than doubled. While L&H's Korean business blossomed, analysts remained skeptical. Brian Skiba, a London-based analyst at Lehman Brothers told the Journal: "It remains very difficult to find customers in Korea and around the area doing large, successful implementations of their voice-recognition software." Yesterday, the United States Army Medical Department signed a five year, US$30 million contract for L&H Dictaphone and transcription solutions.