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Technology Stocks : WCOM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: secureit who wrote (10096)	5/14/2002 11:03:39 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 11568

Excellent interview. Thanks for posting. Interesting point he made, BTW, about consolidated EBITDA. Seems that the accounting rules governing the allocations between WCOM and MCIT trackers results in some $800 million of EBITDA getting lost in the shuffle. Adding the EBITDA figures of each tracker together gives you a sum that is $800 million less than the actual consolidated EBITDA, potentially confusing investors (another reason the tracker should be rolled back in, I suppose). Anyway, Grover puts consolidated EBITDA, the funds available to service the $30 billion of consolidated debt everyone is so worried about, at about $8.5 billion annually right now. With CAPEX headed below $4 billion (they guided last week that they would be cutting at least a billion out of their previous CAPEX budget of $4.9 billion and may cut more - maintenance CAPEX is only about $2 billion), that leaves more than $4.5 billion to pay debt service. After interest (which was $447 million last qtr), that's more than $2.7 billion to pay down (or buy back) debt. Many other interesting bits, including everything from potential non-core assets that could be sold to how profitable the MCI Neighborhood service is and what segments of the business have the ability to raise prices. I recommend that everyone NOT listen to this interview and simply dump your stock first thing tomorrow, at market. I'd like to own more, but I'm cheap. ;-) Bob PS: Those buying WCOM now are effectively participating in a very large leveraged buyout of one of the world's leading communications companies (without the illiquidity or takeover premium that usually go with taking a company private, BTW). PPS: BWTHDIK?