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

To: Alidotr who wrote (11439)	8/15/2001 3:59:42 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12623

I set "mental stops" too...those are the prices at which I stop thinking about a stock because it's too depressing. <g>

To: Alidotr who wrote (11439)	8/15/2001 7:49:55 PM
From: cfoe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12623

thestreet.com Ciena's Got What It Takes to Weather the Storm By Scott Moritz Senior Writer 8/15/01 1:59 PM ET Ciena (CIEN:Nasdaq) has proven that the best defense in a spending slowdown is to sell a product that telcos absolutely have to buy, namely an established optical switch. Of course, the bears make a good case, albeit in broad strokes, that selling communications gear into a market of cash-starved phone companies is bad for your financial health. And network gearmakers like Lucent (LU:NYSE), Nortel (NT:NYSE) and Cisco (CSCO:Nasdaq) have amply proven that. But remarkably, optical-gear specialist Ciena -- while not immune from the freefalling equipment spending -- has managed to stay on track with its projected 100% growth rate this year. The company is expected to reaffirm that target tomorrow morning during its third-quarter earnings conference. Wall Street is expecting Ciena to post 16 cents-per-share profit on $454 million in sales, according to Thomson Financial/First Call. One lever that Ciena has been able to crank is successive sales of its CoreDirector optical switch. In fact, one of the worst-kept secrets in the phone biz is that AT&T (T:NYSE) is just weeks away from awarding Ciena a major chunk of its optical-switching business. Both companies have declined to comment on this. Dogged Ciena fans insist that every network will one day have a CoreDirector switch, and while that may be a stretch, Ciena has shown that it rarely, if ever, has lost a bakeoff in the course of winning 15 or more customers for its CoreDirector. CoreDirector revenues -- though only 10% of total sales this year -- are expected to be double that next year, as spending moves from long route network construction to the nitty gritty of switching and edge or metro network builds. To be sure, Ciena is a tech stock and risky by turns. It's also not cheap. With a $9 billion market capitalization and a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 30, there are a lot of growth assumptions priced in. But compared to upstart Internet gearmaker Juniper(JNPR:Nasdaq), which has a forward P/E of 40, or beloved Cisco with a forward P/E of 39, Ciena is riding on little less of a bubble. Tomorrow morning's call should be interesting. Who will it leave smiling, the Ciena bulls or bears? I've made my bets. (Now just need to make sure I wake up in time for the earnings announcement and call - 5am is a bit early! <g>)