To: kellygreen who wrote (9941 ) 2/19/2001 10:39:12 PM From: rhkohnen Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 15615 Thanks kellygreen, here's the rest. MONDAY FEBRUARY 19, 2001 Short Story: Bad Moon Rising? By Alexander Yakirevich(2/12/2001) In the last couple of months, we brought to your attention several stocks that we thought were poised to decline. In recent months, readers of our short screens on individualinvestor.com have seen nasty declines in shares of Tut Systems (NASDAQ: TUT - Quotes, News, Boards), Phone.com, now Openwave Systems (NASDAQ: OPWV - Quotes, News, Boards), and Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM - Quotes, News, Boards) . One of the principle factors in our selection process was significant activity by short sellers. In addition, we looked for companies that traded at premium multiples to future growth. The results of our analysis were quite encouraging. Recently, we embarked on searching for new short candidates. While our analysis did not produce enough ideas to generate a smorgasbord of names, we did find two stocks that we believe will be of interest to our ShortInterest.com readers. Global Crossing (NYSE: GX - Quotes, News, Boards) We could not help but notice rising short positions in the shares of this global telecommunications carrier. At mid-January, almost 57 million shares were being shorted compared, with less than 55 million by the December 15th disclosure date. Shorts have demonstrated their interest in Global Crossing despite the fact that the stock was off as much as 79% from its 52-week high of $61.81. Contrary to the shorts' sentiment, analysts are overwhelmingly supporting the stock. Out of ten analysts actively covering Global Crossing, nine have a Buy or a Strong Buy rating on the stock and only one has an Outperform rating. The Street's optimism may be explained by assumptions that analysts incorporate into their models. Most analysts value the stock utilizing the discounted cash flow (DCF) approach. The problem, in our view, is that future cash flow projections seem to be too aggressive. Part of Global Crossing's revenue is generated from sale of telecommunications capacity to other carriers. These companies pay cash upfront to Global Crossing to satisfy their needs for additional bandwidth. Based on Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), Global Crossing cannot recognize all the cash flows right away. Instead the revenue from a particular contract must be amortized over the term of a contract. That is exactly what the company does. However, given the fact that cash is collected upfront and there is no return policy attached to sales of communications bandwidth, Global Crossing makes a separate disclosure in the footnotes to its financial statements, where the company computes an adjusted EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) figure. This figure, which analysts use as a proxy for cash flow in their DCF models, is based on cash revenues and accounts for all cash received at the point of sale. To illustrate the magnitude of the difference between GAAP-based and adjusted results, consider the fact that Global Crossing reported negative EBITDA of approximately $74 million in the third quarter ended in September. Its adjusted EBITDA came in at positive $329.9 million, including $354 million generated by "incremental cash deferred revenue" from sales of bandwidth. As of September 30, 2000, Global Crossing was carrying $5.3 billion in long-term debt on its balance sheet and shelling out $112 million in quarterly interest expense. Cash and cash equivalents stood at $1.2 billion. In early January, Global Crossing shared its predictions for 2001. The company expects to generate $7.1 billion to $7.2 billion in "cash revenues" in the year ahead, while its adjusted EBITDA should come in around $2 billion. Interestingly, management expects less than 25%, or $1.8 billion, of that revenue to be generated from bandwidth sales by the end of this year. This means that Global Crossing has to produce more than $200 million in positive EBITDA from underlying operations to hit its cash-flow target. Given the fact that the company was on track (at the end of September) to generate a GAAP-based EBITDA loss of $224 million in 2000, achieving the aforementioned goal promises to be quite a challenge. The revenue forecast may be questioned as well because of the continued pressure on bandwidth pricing. According to statistics recently cited by BlueStone Capital, bandwidth prices dropped as much as 10% during the period from December 4 to January 12. "Plummeting bandwidth prices indicate overcapacity in U.S. long distance and trans-Atlantic communications," wrote BlueStone's analyst, Susan Kalla, in her report. Based on recent trends, Kalla believes that bandwidth prices could drop more than 50% this year. A growing realization that current forecasts for Global Crossing are too aggressive and that its present valuation is unsustainable may be behind the swelling short position in the stock.