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Technology Stocks : Ascend Communications (ASND) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chi-X who wrote (22596)	11/11/1997 12:30:00 PM
From: sepku	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 61433

This guy LEUTHY pointed out that he believed ASND was overvalued at $90 in January, and why he thought so. Many people thought not only this, but of the whole sector as well. To me, there wasn't anything of significance to his post, other than a listing of ASND's competition at the time. I don't know who brought this old post first, Chi or Cam111 from the Fool board, but here is my response to Cam111 (who thinks this guy is like Nostradamus) re: LEUTHY's Jan. post... The post I'm commenting on in its entirety is here: www4.techstocks.com And here is my take on his views back in Jan, comment by comment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CAM writes: >>>The guy who wrote this article was so dead-on right, back in Jan 1997, in his analysis of the networking industry, that he has to be the Nostradamus of networking.<<< ROFL!! That's pretty funny...the guy who wrote that post in January basically said ASND was overvalued...at $90, of course it was! There were multitudes of people declaring ASND overvalued at the time, no big deal. Let's examine the rest of his comments that turned out completely bogus and at the most, irrelevent to ASND. LEUTHY wrote in Jan: >>>Let's have a look at 1997 Players : ASCEND's MAX best Competitor : SHIVA's Lan Rover Access Switch. SHIVA (NASD:SHVA). Market Cap : $650 Million<<< That was ASND's "best competitor" for the MAX? Ha! Today SHVA has a market cap of $280 mil, and has resorted to reselling its product through NT after getting kicked around the market. The company is still confined to a small niche in remote-access: LAN, and still has yet to turn a profit. They aren't even a player anymore. >>>[SHVA] Lan Rover Access Switch products are gaining Market share against ASCEND's MAX in the ISP Market.<<< Don't think so, buddy. Nice imagination though! This guy goes on and on about all the positives of SHVA, and look where that company is today. What can we say about Shiva, but: "wannabe"? Check out this next "1997 player" that he mentions...this one's hilarious, talk about having your foot in your mouth! .... >>>An interesting Challenger : GANDALF Gandalf is a Canadian Company. Market Cap : $150 Million. Although it has some financial weakness, GANDALF is a company with a strong ISDN technology . During 1996 this company has improved its product range and launched two good products for the ISP market. GANDALF recently won some bids against ASCEND's MAX. On January 7th 1996 GANDALF has been named Editor's Choice by PC Magazine for its XpressConnect 5250i multiprotocol router. The XpressConnectr 5250i demonstrated superior performance in a lab test of ISDN routers, beating all competitors, including 3Com, Ascend, Cisco, Shiva and Bay Networks. <<< Where, oh where, is Gandalf today? Wait -- delisted? Bankrupt? Even with all those nice and fuzzy things that LEUTH had to say about the company's supposed competitive position vs ASND!? Gandalf. LMFAO!! Roll over in that grave and make room for SHVA! >>>Cascade's AX Remote Access Servers : MAX TNT's Competition. With its powerful AX remote Access Products, Cascade (NASD:CSCC) could also do quite well in 1997.<<< Nope! CSCC's RAS line got canned after it was aquired. That was LEUTH's top "1997 player" so far, and now its a subsidiary of ASND. :o) >>>US Robotics ' Total Control Access Server. This ISDN+ Modem Remote Access Server has also been tested in Datacom's Magazine. It performed well.<<< Update: MAX TNT kicks Total Control's ass all over the playground. Check out the latest news regarding COMS, and note that the low-end that Total Control targets is not going to be so "low-end" anymore, now that ASND and CSCO are cutting prices on their high-end RAS equipment. Without performance or pricing advantages, Total Control doesn't have very much to offer. >>>Cisco's New Universal Access Server : AS5200 <<< Update: CSCO's new top gun, the AS5300 "Ascend killer" (LOL!). Allegedly offers higher throughput rates vs the MAX TNT, but has yet to be tested in real-world environments. AS5300 is capable of supporting only four T1/E1 interfaces vs 150 for MAX TNT. Which means the MAX TNT supports more users simultaneously with 672 users compared to a piddly little 120 for the AS5300. What do ISPs think about the two competing products? Several weeks ago, UUNET announced it would integrate 170,000 digital modem ports from MAX TNT in a build-out. >>>BAY Networks ' Remote Access Server : Remote Annex 6300. A product coming from Xylogics Corporation, a UK Company acquired by Bay in 1995. BAY could perform well in 1997.<<< Too bad BAY and CS are still tinkering away in their R&D labs. No marketshare. BAY has yet to perform in 1997 when it comes to remote-access. >>>COMPAQ could also be a competitive player in this battle. Although nothing has been revealed, I assume that COMPAQ is preparing something to enter in the ISP Market.<<< Still nothing has been revealed, but this is true. CPQ is looking for entry...the company is filing for new issuance of an enormous amount of shares that will raise billions of new cash. They seem to be positioning to aquire somebody big. They will have no market share presence unless they buy somebody with market share. Who knows...maybe even ASND. Conclusion: The next Nostradamus? I think not. A fair and thoughtful post for January 1997? Sure. Was he right about ASND being overvalued at $90 in Jan? Of course. But many thought so, not only about ASND, but also CSCC, COMS, FORE, and the rest of the sector. Style Pts.