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Technology Stocks : Ciena (CIEN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rustam Tahir who wrote (10317)	2/8/2001 12:39:01 PM
From: denni	Respond to of 12623

thestreet.com Cisco's Slide Spurs Deal Talk, but a Big Splash Won't Be Easy By Scott Moritz Senior Writer 2/7/01 7:09 PM ET "Maybe this would have made sense a year ago, but now Cisco is seeing a slower order momentum and Ciena is seeing an accelerating order picture," says David Bellet, chairman of Crown Advisors International, a New York-based investment firm

To: Rustam Tahir who wrote (10317)	2/8/2001 12:43:31 PM
From: Rustam Tahir	Respond to of 12623

Lightreading on MCLD contract: FEBRUARY 07, 2001 PREVIOUS NEWS ANALYSIS Ciena Lands $200M Deal With McLeod McLeodUSA (Nasdaq: MCLD - message board) will spend $200 million over two years to buy several of Ciena's optical networking products, both companies announced this morning (see Ciena, McCleod Close $200M Deal ). McLeodUSA is an unprofitable emerging CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier), which means it's a notch below the trophy customer on the financial level. But the deal represents a significant win for Ciena Corp. (Nasdaq: CIEN - message board) on the technical level. The optical networking vendor beat several competitors to the deal, including Nortel Networks Corp. (NYSE/TSE: NT - message board), Sycamore Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: SCMR - message board), and Tellium Inc., which were all among the companies included in the original RFP, according to a McLeodUSA official. McLeodUSA is based in Cedar City, Iowa. It primarily serves the Rocky Mountain region, offering voice and data services. It reported over $1.4 billion in revenue in 2000, but it is also largely unprofitable and in debt. The company lost $500 million during 2000. On the technology side, the deal is important because McLeodUSA has opted to build a next-generation mesh backbone based on DWDM (dense wavelength-division multiplexing), rather than selecting equipment based on a Sonet architecture. Several Ciena products, including the CoreDirector switch, CoreStream transport product, and the LightWorks management system will be used to build the network, according to both companies. "Ciena's technical maturity in the industry and the feature sets on their CoreDirector and CoreStream platforms were key selling points," wrote Robert Adams, director of network planning at McLeodUSA, in responding to questions that were emailed to him by Light Reading. The deal is not exclusive, however, according to Adams. "McLeodUSA will not be put into a position of single vendor dependence." "For us, what's important is you have a carrier basing its network on a new mesh architecture instead of Sonet ADMs," said Denny Bilter, senior director of marketing with Ciena. The deal was announced on the same day that Ciena raised a total of $1.5 billion in a combined debt and secondary stock offering (see doclink 3564). Ciena shares were trading down 2.00 (1.78%) at 83, in late afternoon trading.

To: Rustam Tahir who wrote (10317)	2/8/2001 12:58:22 PM
From: James Fulop	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12623

>>• McLeodUSA is among a handful of well-funded CLECs. We estimate that its network expansion is over-funded by $400MM, assuming $1B in capital spending in 2001.<< Interesting. Some posters on the Sycamore and Nortel threads immediately assumed Ciena was financing this whole deal and therefore thought the contract was not attractive. I had my doubts about it being vendor financed given Ciena's record (my understanding of even the Iaxis situation was that it was not originally vendor financing but normal receivables that went into arrears....)and the above just lends more backing to my assumption. Thanks.