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

To: jeff wheatley who wrote (28167)	12/17/1997 7:05:00 PM
From: sepku	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 61433

>>>ASND receives 25-30% of revenues from Asia. Have you seen any analysis of how this will affect earnings over the next couple of quarters?<<< I haven't seen any analysis relating to ASND particularly, but I have a general idea of some of the possible impacts on the networking sector as a whole, since that has been discussed by many. I didn't realize that ASND carried so much exposure in Asia. I thought that was more along the lines of their Euro exposure. I thought it was closer to 15% Asia, 35% Euro, 50% Domestic...does anyone have the actual numbers in print? Did you see that Prudential analysis I posted on the News-Only thread that covered networking/telco, and the possible Asian impact on these sectors? I take it the firm doesn't own ASND shares, since they did not mention it, but they did cover a few of the other larger players. This excerpt I found very interesting and I believe it is positive for ASND: --> Higher price sensitivity and devalued currencies make local (i.e. Asian) substitutes more attractive. The impact is greater the nearer a product is to a commodity. We believe that the biggest risks are in network adaptor cards (3Com), modems (3Com), and pagers (Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson), and very low-end shared-media hubs (Bay, 3Com). <-- So it would seem that ASND is somewhat shielded from the greatest impact of devalued Asian currencies, since ASND's products are not considered commodities. Prudential seems to stress the most concern over China. The larger the % of sales coming from that nation, the greater the risk to those companies. That was precisely what caused ERICY and NOK.A to get hit so hard over the past month. As for Japan, that market has been a weak one for networking sector-wide for basically the entire year of 1997, so I doubt that would really impact ASND. NTT has already committed itself to that 3-yr contract with CSCC, so that's a plus. It also seems common consensus that Japan will likely hold up the strongest to the situation in Asia. All in all, I really don't know. But I'm glad ASND does not make a business in commodity networking gear. Also, according to the DMG conference, domestic sales are very strong. In combination with a Euro demand coming back on track, this is expected to make up for continued weakness in Japan. The big "?" is China...I wonder how much exposure ASND has to that nation, because I never hear it mentioned. Style Pts.