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To: Dutch who wrote (638)	10/25/2000 10:05:47 PM
From: Dealer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 104197

Hi Dutch! Welcome to the club this is where you go when ya on vacation. <ggg> What a place to relax. Pardon the wet hair but I just came from the club sauna. :-) Want a drink! Clappy will set ya up. He's the club bartender. dealie

To: Dutch who wrote (638)	10/25/2000 10:33:16 PM
From: elpolvo	Respond to of 104197

hi dutch- we've taken the 12 step program down to 3 steps. come in sit down have a brewski we're not worried about tomorrow. yet! we'll deal with it tomorrow. <G> just in case you want to start early, a news article follows. -polvie Wednesday October 25 5:27 PM ET Fiber-Optic Suppliers Sink on Slow Demand By Susan Taylor OTTAWA (Reuters) - A rush of air escaped from the high-flying fiber-optic balloon on Wednesday after signs of slowing demand from Nortel Networks Corp. triggered deep market declines on Wednesday among the companies supplying parts for the high-speed network equipment. Surprising news that Nortel's (NYSE:NT - news) (Toronto:NT.TO - news) third-quarter fiber-optic sales declined from the second quarter sparked steep losses of up to 25 percent among the stocks in the red-hot fiber-optic component sector. Fiber optics is the science of sending data as light rather than electronic signals, technology that offers advantages of higher capacity and speed in today's wired world. Other companies in the supply chain, such as semiconductor makers, also fell sharply on Wednesday as investors worried that future sales could slump. The bad news from Nortel comes hard on the heels of a fourth-quarter fiber-optic sales decline at Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:LU - news), the world's No. 1 telecommunications equipment supplier. ``The last two data points in optical systems, which is both Lucent and Nortel, are meaningfully below where we had thought they would be,'' said Michael Neiberg, analyst at Chase Hambrecht & Quist. ``The entire optics space is getting a little bit tarnished right now.'' Drooping Lucent demand hit third-quarter fiber-optic sales reported at Corning Inc. (NYSE:GLW - news) this week. They rose 15 percent sequentially to $255 million, but fell slightly shy of expectations, wrote UBS Warburg analyst Joseph Wolf in a research note. Shares in Corning, which also sells equipment to Nortel, shed 18 percent to end at $76-7/8 on Wednesday. Analysts agree that the dip in network sales at Nortel and Lucent is troubling, but several suggest that other fast-growing equipment suppliers such as CIENA Corp. (NasdaqNM:CIEN - news) will likely pick up the slack. ``We have talked to a number of suppliers who have seen their orders or shipments to Lucent decrease,'' said John Lively, senior analyst at fiber-optic market researchers Ryan Hankin Kent Inc. ``And they have been able to stay producing at capacity because there's so much demand from other companies.'' Market Awaits Jds Results The market now anxiously awaits first-quarter results from JDS Uniphase Corp. (Toronto:JDU.TO - news) on Thursday, a bellwether component supplier which counts Nortel and Lucent as its top two customers. ``Softer sales at both Lucent and Nortel will impact them,'' said Arun Veerappan, an optical component analyst at Roberston Stephenson who rates JDS a buy. ``I don't think it's a situation where we're going to take numbers down, but it is definitely a situation where we're not going to be able to take numbers up as much as we would have like to.'' JDS Uniphase is expected to report net earnings of 16 cents per share, according to 27 analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial. ``While Lucent and Nortel accounted for 35 percent of sales in the June quarter, we believe that JDS is supply constrained and is nimble enough to shift revenues from customer to customer,'' wrote Wolf. Jittery markets on Wednesday drove down JDS Uniphase shares by 23 percent to end at $71 on the Nasdaq. On the Toronto Stock Exchange, the stock shed C$33.25 to close at C$111.55. Component maker SDL Inc. (NasdaqNM:SDLI - news), which JDS Uniphase is acquiring in a deal it expects to close in December, also fell heavily. The stock shed 26 percent to end at $234-3/16 on the Nasdaq. SPENDING SLOWDOWN? ``I think that we are embarking into a period of decelerating carrier spending,'' said Paul Sagawa, analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. ``Optical is like the last little bit of sand on an island that's sinking into the sea, and everyone's crowded on the sand and no one wants to admit they're going to have to take swimming lessons.'' Nortel told analysts it expects equipment spending growth from its customers in the 20-25 percent range next year. Still, concerns of a wide-spread industry spending slowdown left a range of fiber-optic suppliers badly bruised on Wednesday. Communications chip makers such as Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (NasdaqNM:AMCC - news) shed 25 percent to $148, PMC-Sierra Inc. (NasdaqNM:PMCS - news) tumbled 19 percent to end at $161-1/8 and Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. (NasdaqNM:VTSS - news)lost 17 percent to close at $56. The damage also extended to fiber-optic equipment suppliers such as Ciena, which lost 20 percent to close at $108-3/8, and Sycamore Networks Inc. (NasdaqNM:SCMR - news), which tumbled $16-51/64 to close at $65-1/2 Unlike Lucent, which said its fiber-optic sales woes were due largely to the late introduction of products, Nortel said it faced slower demand because customers had stockpiled inventory. Nortel, which now expects annual fiber-optic networks sales of $10 billion versus earlier forecasts of $12 billion, said it has boosted manufacturing capacity to meet market demand and now faces a ``bottleneck'' in system installation. ``We still think that the optics growth rate for the whole market in general will be in the range in 50 to 75 percent going into 2001,'' said Tom Astle, analyst with Merrill Lynch. ''We're in the very early days of optics...we think that roughly 10 percent of capital spending goes to optics today.'' dailynews.yahoo.com