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Technology Stocks : Osicom(FIBR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grantcw who wrote (4710)	1/25/1998 4:47:00 PM
From: craig crawford	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10479

<< I want to know why you personally think the Gigamux, by itself, doesn't make the company worth at least $5 a share. Please tell me of all the competitors it has and the lack of market for the product. I'd love to hear some facts. >> OK, Grant, I'm getting to your post now. Let me say first that I haven't really looked at the Gigamux. I don't know exactly how it functions, the exact price, etc. Also, detailed technology specifications are hard for me to grasp. I am not an engineer and I don't work in telecom/bandwith/fiber-optic industries. I can tell you why I don't think the Gigamux is a big deal and why it's not going to "scare" me into covering. First of all, from my perspective, it seems like FIBR always seems to be involved in the "hot" growth industries. You know, wireless, networking, (such as) remote access, routers, hubs, LAN/WAN switching, ATM, networking "chips" (like the Net+Arm) etc. All these products offered by FIBR haven't done anything for the company in the past, so I consider the Gigamux to be just another one of those products. I recall in the 10K Osicom was talking about how their Remote Access Server had more ports than Ascends at a cheaper price, etc. I thought this was kind of funny, because I'm not used to companies doing advertisements like that in their SEC filings. At any rate, if FIBR has such better routers, hubs, RAS devices, switches, wireless equipment etc., than how come they aren't anything more than an asterik in market share, and how come they can't earn the kind of money that companies like A$ND and C$CO can. You know A$ND has only been public since 1994, and FIBR came public in 1995, so I don't see how A$ND had such a big head start. People love to point out that FIBR has grown their sales so quickly. Can FIBR grow their sales internally or do they grow their sales mainly through acquisition? A$ND was quite profitable by the time they had $100 million in sales. A$ND was showing strong sequential growth in sales and earnings. FIBR's sales declined 30% last Q!!!! Also, I think FIBR is way too small to be offering hundreds of products. They have no way of keeping up with companies that have much larger research budgets and more marketing muscle. FIBR should devote all of it's resources toward one specialized niche. There is no way in hell that a little company like FIBR can offer hundreds of products that are the most technologically superior and yet are competitive on price. They just don't have the kind of money to compete on a broad level. That's how I know their products aren't superior. Cisco spent more money on R&D than Osicom had in sales last year. Ascend spent more money on R&D last year than FIBR's total net worth. CIEN is offering short-haul WDM products. HWP is working on them as well as many other companies. FIBR has practically no cash to develop their products even if they are competitive. FIBR has never shown me a product that has been able to drive sales and earnings sufficiently enough to internally fund their business. They even admit that in SEC filings. They say they fund their business through debt issuances, security placements, and credit financing. (not word for word but close enough). I agree that WDM has a huge future but metro-WDM is going to be slower to adopt than you realize. Telecom companies are notorious for taking months to years before they will deploy something in their network. Just look at xDSL. They have been hyping that up for years and it still isn't widely deployed. Even CIEN has to go through months of trials before they can get a customer to use their products. I have more thoughts on this issue but I have to get ready to go watch the Broncos whoop the Packers.