Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scotsman who wrote (26977)	12/20/1997 11:18:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

TCI boxes. They name some names............................................... multichannel.com TCI Masterminds Set-Top Order By LESLIE ELLIS John C. Malone's push to make advanced digital boxes "ubiquitous" devices shifted into gear last week, as the Tele-Communications Inc. chairman and CEO masterminded a huge set-top order that should bring in other big-name technology partners soon. TCI laid out plans to buy between 6.9 million and 11.5 million digital set-tops from General Instrument Corp. (which changed its name back from NextLevel Systems Inc.) over the next three to five years. To win orders from TCI and other operators, GI also agreed to yield up to 16 percent of its company in the form of stock warrants. The high volumes involved will keep the new boxes at an average cost of about $300, making the deal worth $4.5 billion to GI. Other shoes may drop soon. At press time, GI was close to a deal with Sony Electronics Corp. or Thomson Consumer Electronics Inc. as potential manufacturing partners to act as secondary suppliers and to bring retail-distribution connections, sources familiar with the talks said. TCI is also "leaning very close" to an arrangement with Intel Corp. for the microprocessors and with Microsoft Corp. for its Windows CE operating system for TCI's new boxes, according to one executive who requested anonymity. Malone and other cable CEOs visited Intel after the Western Show. GI nabbed an order for "at least" 15 million set-tops from TCI and other MSOs. TCI and its direct "family" of other MSOs -- including joint-venture partners and existing Headend in the Sky affiliates -- get 6.9 million. HITS will buy an additional 4.6 million boxes for other small MSOs that aren't yet HITS affiliates. About nine other MSOs will buy another 3.5 million GI boxes. Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications Inc., Comcast Corp. and Shaw Communications publicly acknowledged their roles in the deal. Other MSOs, such as MediaOne and Cablevision Systems Corp., declined to comment, but they are apparently involved, as well. In an unexpected twist, GI will buy the security portion of TCI's HITS service, based in Littleton, Colo. -- the so-called central nervous system of HITS -- for 10 percent equity in GI, currently worth some $380 million. Analysts said that could help to sway future HITS affiliates that were wary of entrusting that job to TCI. In an interview last Thursday, Malone acknowledged that GI's assuming the access-control and encryption functions "is important, because it puts us at arm's length of information that potential HITS affiliates found disturbing for us to know, like how many subscribers they have and what they're buying." MSOs in the set-top order also receive warrants for GI stock, to be exercised only after set-tops are shipped. "It's like a rebate," said Jim Chiddix, chief technical officer for Time Warner, which will buy 500,000 GI set-tops. The warrants, with a strike price of $14.25 per share, represent about 16 percent of GI's equity. GI CEO Edward Breen called the warrants a "creative" move to help put some teeth into the orders, because they can't be used unless the MSOs take deliveries. "It's a nice feeling that 16 percent of our company is [going to be] owned by our customer base," he told analysts. Malone declared last week: "This is really a watershed for the cable industry and for TCI. It represents the first evidence of real hard convergence of the computer world and the cable-TV-video world." He added that over the next three to four years, he was "looking forward to bringing television-set computing ubiquitously to our customers and our affiliates." Malone again suggested that other strategic players would end up financing a significant portion of the order, declining to be more specific. Malone said GI plans to offer MSOs a range of boxes, which will be "backward- and forward-compatible." TCI's digital cable service will continue using GI DCT-1000 boxes and, in early 1999, they will move up to mass deployment of "Cadillac-type boxes," meaning the DCT-5000 with a built-in cable modem. Malone also said that Scientific-Atlanta Inc. will act as "systems integrator" on the project. Allen Ecker, chief technical officer for S-A, said last week that S-A would continue to divide orders with GI. GI's stock rose by about 18 percent, to $17.68 per share, last Wednesday after the deal was announced, and it then slipped a bit Thursday. But Cowen & Co. analyst James Kedersha said much of the gain could be attributed to GI's report the same day that cost-cutting measures would add 20 cents per share to its results next year. Kedersha said he didn't want to sound overly negative, but there were plenty of questions yet to be answered. Among them: How will the MSOs pay for the boxes? How rapidly will MSOs convince customers to buy digital services? And how much profit will GI earn on the order? Malone said last week that in order to deal in high volumes, GI will have to accept slimmer profit margins. Kent Gibbons contributed to this story.

To: Scotsman who wrote (26977)	12/21/1997 8:30:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

Korea might need just a few trillion won more........................... scmp.com MondayÿÿDecember 22ÿÿ1997 Seoul lifts tempo of bad-loan clean-up REUTERS in Seoul South Korea's finance ministry said yesterday it would increase a state fund established to buy bad loans to 20 trillion won (about HK$104 billion) from eight trillion won. "We plan to raise the size of the fund with an aim to buy all of the bad loans by the end of January," an official at the ministry's industrial finance division said. He said the ministry would also allow the Korea Asset Management Corp, manager of the bad-loan liquidation fund, to issue US$2 billion worth of bonds on overseas markets, including New York. "We plan to speed up the process of cleaning up bad loans with the financial system as we promised the International Monetary Fund," the official said. The government's most pressing priority over the next few days will be to ensure ailing financial institutions are able to meet multi-billion dollar debt obligations due at the year-end, to stave off the lingering spectre of sovereign debt default. The bad-loan plan is expected to feature in 13 financial reform bills that the three main political parties, in a demonstration of a new spirit of national resolve, agreed to pass this week in the National Assembly. The finance ministry said the nation's bad loans were estimated at about 28 trillion won at the end of last month, but analysts said they would be well over 35 trillion won now. "Unfortunately, no one seems to clearly know whether South Korea can meet the obligations," an analyst at ABN Amro Hoare Govett Asia, said. On Saturday, president-elect Kim Dae-jung held a crisis meeting with incumbent president Kim Young-sam. The two men reiterated their intention to abide by the terms of a US$57 billion bailout package led by the IMF.