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Strategies & Market Trends : The Amateur Traders Corner -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GregS who wrote (6880)	3/7/2001 3:17:03 PM
From: Tom Hua	Respond to of 19633

Cisco's Russo Says Optical Orders `Picking Up' in Recent Weeks By Scott Lanman, San Francisco, March 6 (Bloomberg) -- Cisco Systems Inc. Vice President Carl Russo, who heads the company's optical-networking business, said orders in his division have increased in recent weeks as customers start spending their annual budgets. ``I see things picking up,'' Russo said during a question-and- answer session at the Thomas Weisel Partners Emerging Networks Conference in San Francisco. ``What I'm seeing now is we're moving through those steps to close the contract,'' after customers were delaying orders, he said. Russo didn't mention specific agreements. Last month, Cisco said it won an order to sell as much as $1 billion of gear to natural-gas pipeline owner El Paso Corp., which is building a fiber-optic network. In a brief interview following the presentation, Russo said ``there's more coming.'' Cisco spokeswoman Robyn Jenkins said Russo referred to ``positive momentum'' in sales of optical equipment to handle streams of data traffic flowing over fiber-optic networks in cities. Russo came to Cisco in November 1999 when it bought his company, Cerent Corp., for that type of equipment. Cisco shares rose 92 cents to $24 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. They've declined 37 percent this year. Cisco, rivals Nortel Networks Corp. and Lucent Technologies Inc., and their suppliers, such as chipmaker PMC-Sierra Inc., have all suffered in recent months as phone companies have delayed or cancel orders amid a U.S. economic slowdown. ``People are now sitting there saying, ``I got a budget, I know what I need to do and we're going,''' Russo said. Optical-networking equipment accounts for less than 10 percent of Cisco's revenue, Russo said. He declined to give an exact figure.