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Technology Stocks : Lucent Technologies (LU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ron who wrote (20137)	5/26/2002 5:12:59 PM
From: sylvester80	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21876

William T. O'Shea on future of Lucent, telecom industry I love that Lucent management has the right view of the world and is preparing the company for the next run. It's not if... it's WHEN. I'm more convinced than ever that owning Lucent is the right way to play the next run. Lucent management has done a lot less talking and a lot more hard working to turn around this phenomenal company. Everyone will look 12-24 months from now and kick themselves for not getting in. JMHO. boston.com By Globe Staff, 5/26/2002 William T. O'Shea wears three big hats at Lucent Technologies: president of its famed Bell Labs, chief technology officer, and executive vice president of strategy and marketing. The 30-year company veteran also is among many top executives of the Murray Hill, N.J., telecom giant with Massachusetts roots, having earned degrees from the 1960s version of UMass-Lowell and Northeastern University. O'Shea spoke with the Globe's Peter J. Howe about the future of Lucent and the industry during a visit with Boston trade analysts last week. Q. Is the worst over for telecom-equipment makers like Lucent? A. My perspective is we're bumping around on this bottom. We will see little ups and downs [for another year or more], but it's inevitable that this industry will recover. It's fundamental to the economy. The multibillion-dollar question is, ''When?'' There isn't a near-term catalyst. A lot will depend on what happens to the economy generally. Enterprises have to get spending again, and it will take a couple of quarters for that to reach the service providers, and a couple of quarters after that to reach the equipment vendors. What was overbuilt was the core network, the high-speed backbone. Q. How soon will broadband Internet really take off beyond the current 12 million homes and start driving demand for core network upgrades? A. These things get into a virtuous cycle, [but] they're always hard to get started. I think we're at the very beginning.... The way we all live and work is going to change. The problem is that the industry led us to believe it was going to happen overnight. We've just started with [high-speed] wireless. The industry isn't even at the point of being ubiquitously available. To me, the exciting thing is that this whole revolution has just begun. We're really in the messy, early stages of it. Q. What does Lucent do in the meantime? A. It's all about positioning ourselves to be ready when the growth begins to come back, improving how the company operates and making sure we have the right portfolio of products. Q. Lucent has gone from being a company that bought almost a start-up a month in 1999 - companies like Excel Switching, Nexabit Networks, Spring Tide, and Xedia - to one that has cut 4,000 jobs in Massachusetts in the last 18 months. Do you see Lucent going back on the acquisition prowl? A. Our strategy wasn't acquisition. Our strategy was what it was, and we had three ways to implement it: internal development, acquisitions, and partnerships. Without putting a time frame on it, I suspect we would be back to that balanced kind of view of the world [and resume some dealmaking]. Some of the [local deals] have been successful for us. Some of them have been less successful. In all cases we brought in some terrific people. [But after shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars of stock for months-old start-ups, Lucent has learned the crucial challenge of being sure] you're really getting what you think you're getting.