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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Caxton Rhodes who wrote (20112)	3/8/2002 12:29:42 PM
From: Ibexx	Respond to of 196720

Qualcomm shares up on Telefonica buy of Pegaso LOS ANGELES, March 8 (Reuters) - Shares in wireless technology vendor Qualcomm Inc. (NasdaqNM:QCOM - news) rose on Friday after a large Spanish wireless operator said it would buy the majority of Mexico's Pegaso, a wireless carrier heavily indebted to Qualcomm. ADVERTISEMENT Shares in Qualcomm rose $2.41, or 5.8 percent, to $43.85 at midday on Nasdaq, where they were among the 25 most active issues. On Friday, Telefonica Moviles (NYSE:TEM - news) , a unit of Spain's Telefonica SA , said it would pay $70.5 million for a 65 percent stake in Pegaso, making it the No. 2 wireless operator in Mexico. Telefonica Moviles said its deal valued Pegaso at $1.36 billion, and a source close to the deal told Reuters most of the difference between the purchase price and the valuation was debt to be assumed. Pegaso has a vendor financing agreement with Qualcomm, under which it owes about $600 million to the U.S. company, which develops and markets technology based on the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) wireless standard. Last fall, Pegaso stopped making interest payments to Qualcomm on its debt, though Qualcomm has not written down the $600 million it is owed. On Friday, brokerage SG Cowen said such a write-down was unlikely. ``(We) do not believe it is likely (Qualcomm) will have to write down its Pegaso exposure given the speculated Telefonica purchase price, and our own discussions with (Qualcomm) management last week that it does not intend to do so,'' the firm said in a note to clients. The news comes after another announcement on Friday that KDDI Corp., Japan's second-largest mobile phone operator, will launch services based on BREW, or ``Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless,'' a platform developed by Qualcomm for application downloads to cell phones on high-speed wireless networks. (With additional reporting by Carlos Ruano in Madrid) _________ Q! is off the hook (sort of). Ibexx