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

To: P.M.Freedman who wrote (744)	12/12/1997 4:22:00 PM
From: Perry	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1629

Old News? Newbridge Falls on Concern of New Product From Rival (Update1) (Adds closing share prices throughout.) Ottawa, Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Newbridge Networks Corp. shares dropped as much as 7 percent on concern a new product from Ascend Communications Inc. may hurt Newbridge's frame- relay equipment sales. Newbridge fell C$3.90 (US2.74) to C$52.30 in Toronto trading of 2.17 million shares, more than two times the three-month daily average. Earlier, the shares fell C$5.10 to C$51.10. The stock has dropped C$8.65, or 14.1 percent in the past three days and it's 45 percent below its record high of C$95 reached Oct. 8. Although the market reacted strongly to concerns Alameda, California-based Ascend's new frame relay card, which will be sold to large phone companies, may affect Newbridge's sales, Benoit Chotard, an analyst with Levesque Beaubien Geoffrion in Montreal, said investors have over-reacted. Both companies sell similar lines of communications equipment. ''At some point the carnage will be over and it will be a great opportunity to go into a company that has high margins and winning major contracts,'' Chotard said. He added that he expects the problems at Newbridge's UB Networks unit in the U.S. will be resolved by the end of the fiscal third-quarter in January. Newbridge shares are a ''buy'' at current levels and poised to be a ''roaring buy'' if they decline further, Chotard said. The shares of many other communication equipment makers also fell today. Lucent Technologies Inc. dropped 1 15/16 to 78 3/16 in New York, Northern Telecom fell C$2.50 to C$134.70 in Toronto and Cisco Systems Inc. declined 2 1/16 to 85 3/8 on Nasdaq. Some of those declines could be attributed to Oracle Corp., shares, which have tumbled since the database software maker said Monday its fiscal second-quarter profit rose a less-than-expected 4.5 percent to US$187 million, or 18 cents a share. Oracle shares fell 9 7/16 to 22 15/15 yesterday. Chotard said investors should focus on Newbridge's strong infrastructure, particularly its asynchronous transfer mode unit which is selling robustly as phone companies buy equipment to move large amounts of traffic across data networks. The concerns that ATM prices could decline, he said, should be tempered by Newbridge's efficient manufacturing operations and its ability to lower costs.