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Technology Stocks : MRV Communications (MRVC) opinions? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sector Investor who wrote (6586)	12/21/1997 5:18:00 PM
From: Eric L.	Respond to of 42804

Not a big FORTUNE fan myself, but after all the gloom lately found this little bit refreshing.... pathfinder.com following is the most pertinent part for us...since MRVC seems to be somewhat tied to folks' perceptions of the networkers...also I believe MRVC is a customer of MMC mentioned here... Meeker: Still.[Dell is} firing on all cylinders. They have the Web, they have international, they have the server business, and the direct-sales model is growing more rapidly than other models in the business. Roger, what about you? McNamee: The people who are building the Internet have a gigantic business opportunity. The obvious leader is Cisco Systems, which is the dominant player in networking. Sun Microsystems is down a ton. I'm sorry, but this company is not going out of business. The stock is unbelievably cheap. You cannot build the Internet without Sun servers. 3Com is another stock that's down a ton. They're having a lot of inventory issues this quarter and people are terrified, but they are No. 2 in networking. They're not going away. We're huge fans of PMC-Sierra, which dominates a number of markets for the chips that you use to build networking devices. A recent IPO called Mmc Networks, which makes a different kind of networking chip. Some people are now saying the run is over for Cisco and 3Com. Meeker: That's what they've been saying for years. So this is really just the pause that refreshes? McNamee: I would suggest that every time you hear somebody tell you that Cisco Systems isn't going to grow anymore, you ought to buy the stock. The same way you should add on Intel. Customers don't want to deal with ten different vendors. These are industries where customers want somebody to set a standard, and they will reward that company disproportionately. Meeker: If you believe in the growth in the Internet, you have to own Cisco. McNamee: Over time, the smart companies reposition themselves. The job that Microsoft has done in the last two years of repositioning itself as an Internet play has been nothing short of miraculous. You never would have thought that was possible.

To: Sector Investor who wrote (6586)	12/21/1997 6:38:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42804

One thing I forgot in my previous post is that MRVC is not competing with CSCO in all areas - only FE/GE and IP switch. CSCO does not even have a GE product for another 6 months or so, and no fiber business. So when comparing them you don't look at all the other things CSCO does, just those three areas. Regarding slowing growth, I don't think this has been shown conclusively yet. They have been in a transition period this whole year, yet revenues came close to doubling the year ago period in Q3 (42.0M vs 22.7M) - the first time the qtr-to-year-ago-qtr was NOT at least double. True, they will be hard pressed to do $62M THIS Q4 to double last Q4 (especially with the Asia situation), but they can still double EPS (hard to figure as 4Q '96 was clouded by the acquisition of Fibronics). I think they should be able to double 1Q 97's 3.8M in 1Q 98. Growth should be figured annually, not quarterly, IMO, as there are too many variables that can affect single quarters. So when 1997 is fully reported in late January, then we can get a good feel for MRVC's growth rate.