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Strategies & Market Trends : Technical analysis for shorts & longs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Johnny Canuck who wrote (39830)	6/29/2003 12:26:48 PM
From: Return to Sender	Respond to of 71619

What Buyers? By Jim Brown A day that was supposed to be bullish turned into a rout as the Dow gave up 9000 once again. End of quarter buying was nonexistent along with volume as the indexes slipped into the red after lunch. The Russell-2000 was the best performer but it also slipped fractionally into the red just before the close. With the Fed behind us and a shortened holiday week ahead we are entering into a critical period for the markets. investorshub.com

To: Johnny Canuck who wrote (39830)	6/30/2003 3:30:21 AM
From: Johnny Canuck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71619

3Com expects loss to continue By Reuters June 26, 2003, 6:24 AM PT 3Com reported on Wednesday a quarterly loss after restructuring charges and said a critical joint venture in China would launch about two months later than planned. The network equipment maker said it expected "no material improvement in the marketplace'' in the current quarter, a seasonally weak period, especially in Europe, which accounts for almost half of 3Com's corporate and institutional sales. 3Com said it expected a joint venture with Huawei Technologies to be fully operational in the second fiscal quarter, or about two months later than first projected, in part due to the timing of approvals by the Chinese government. Santa Clara, Calif.-based 3Com posted a fiscal fourth-quarter net loss of $38.4 million, or 11 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $23.8 million, or 7 cents per share, a year earlier. Analysts, on average, had expected a loss of 12 cents per share, according to Reuters Research. The company reported $56 million in restructuring charges from property write-downs, job cuts and other expenses. 3Com has said it is cutting 10 percent of its work force and moving its Silicon Valley headquarters to a Massachusetts facility where most of its enterprise-market operations are located. Revenue in the quarter that ended May 30 declined to $175 million, excluding sales from its recently sold CommWorks carrier business. That compares with $294.8 million a year earlier. Sales to enterprise customers--corporations, government agencies and large institutions--fell about 21 percent from the prior quarter. 3Com Chief Executive Bruce Claflin called the results "disappointing,'' saying the SARS outbreak had hurt sales in Hong Kong and Singapore. UBS analyst Stephen Chin, who does not own 3Com shares and whose firm does not provide investment banking services to the company, said the weak results showed the pressure 3Com faces. "May-quarter results just show how difficult the pricing environment is for low-end local area network switches, which we think are 50 to 60 percent of their networking business,'' Chin said. "Profitability is likely to be difficult.'' 3Com, a smaller rival of networking industry leader Cisco Systems, had forecast revenue ranging from $165 million to $175 million, excluding sales from CommWorks. The company completed its sale of CommWorks in May to telecom gear vendor UTStarcom for about $100 million in cash. Fiscal fourth-quarter enterprise revenue from the Americas rose 3 percent from its third quarter, while sales in its Europe-Middle East-Africa market fell 33 percent and Asia-Pacific Rim sales fell about 31 percent, mostly due to weakness in China. "Clearly, Hong Kong and Singapore were impacted by SARS,'' Claflin told Reuters. "The fact the United States actually grew is a positive sign,'' Claflin added. Claflin said he is satisfied with how 3Com's joint venture with telecom vendor Huawei is progressing. "The kind of things causing the delay are normal stuff,'' Claflin said, noting the first product Huawei has built for 3Com will ship at the end of July. 3Com struck the joint venture to focus on the enterprise market and to better compete with Cisco. Demand in that market for network routers and switches has been relatively stable through the long-running tech slump, helping offset sharply reduced equipment spending by telecom carriers. "The joint venture will help them grow their revenues. But because it's late, that won't happen as they had hoped,'' Chin said. [Harry: No traction on the LAN's translates into no need to upgrade the WAN. Still no corporate demand and that is what is needed to really drive the business. Fibre to the curb due to the low rates consumers will pay and the resulting low margins is not going to fuel a sustained recovery for equipment suppliers.]