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

To: Jeff Jordan who wrote (299)	2/3/2005 11:20:23 AM
From: tech101	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4245

Broadwing owns close to 20,000 miles most advanced national optical network. However, they "are not just a carrier's carrier. In fact, only 36% of our revenue comes from the carrier's carrier business", and the remaining revenue comes from their 116,000 custmers on the enterprise side in the 23 Tier-1 markets. Someone must be coveting. Everyone who cares should listen to the broadcasting by the Seventh Annual Needham Growth Conference. I guarrantee you'll get more information than calling Dawn - the PR lady: wsw.com

To: Jeff Jordan who wrote (299)	2/3/2005 2:27:55 PM
From: tech101	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4245

Old News with New Meaning? THE NEXT M&A WAVE by Troy Hartzell Sep 27, 2004 12:00 PM TelephonyOnline.com telephonyonline.com The biggest opportunities in the telecom services market may come from the companies that you've been ignoring for the last four years. Since 2002, about 80 middle-market telecom service providers have each raised more than $100 million in growth capital, and 50% of them have raised more than twice that amount. Many were forced to restructure and recapitalize due to the excessive amounts of equity sold and the tremendous burden of debt service they incurred throughout the land-grab growth strategies of the late 1990s. A small faction of survivors within this group successfully reinvented themselves, quietly building a solid foundation consisting of strong financial performance with clean balance sheets; significant infrastructure with substantial excess capacity and little to no debt payments on the infrastructure; and strong recurring revenues and excess amounts of free cash flow that can be invested in mergers and acquisitions, R&D or expansion of next-generation product offerings. These companies now find themselves in the sweet spot of the growth capital and M&A markets. They continue to take full advantage of superheated private debt and equity markets, and with such inexpensive capital, they have been recapitalized and have eliminated much of their initial infrastructure costs. The emergence of disruptive technologies is also transforming the fundamental profitability and competitiveness of telecom services business models. Technologies like VoIP and broadband wireless are augmenting service offerings and improving gross margins. Finally, the telecom industry is embracing the services model again — a far more predictable business model from a revenue standpoint. So these companies are now moving past the business model viability question and on to the next hurdles: execution and scaling. Those market drivers are giving service provider survivors an unfair advantage over larger incumbent players that are less nimble, sustain higher equipment costs and are held hostage by public market scrutiny. Equally important, these drivers are transforming telecom service companies into compelling acquisition candidates and investment vehicles — and institutional investors as well as strategic buyers are revisiting this sector for investment opportunities. We are at the front end of this curve, but during the next year investors will pursue the most promising telecom service players that can demonstrate the ability to continue to scale profitably. Financial and strategic acquirers will be looking for proven telecom services companies of substantial scale that can be used as a platform for the acquisition of industry peers within a particular sector. They will also be looking for the opportunity to enhance profitability through additional recurring revenue streams, such as managed services. Acquirers will be looking for clean balance sheets with low debt, good capital structure, strong customer adoption, access to a large distribution network and recurring revenue. Expect a big increase in the number of mergers and acquisitions in an attempt to achieve scale and create industry-leading next-generation service providers.