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

To: gbh who wrote (40848)	3/24/1998 6:13:00 PM
From: Zainul Hamza	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 61433

Are earnings for this quarter suspect? Why did so many insiders including the CEO sell most of their holdings in Feb. 1998? Here are the news items: 1) freerealtime.com:8000/news?symbol=asnd&art=082u2335 2) freerealtime.com:8000/news?symbol=asnd&art=082u2334 3) freerealtime.com:8000/news?symbol=asnd&art=082u2333 4) freerealtime.com:8000/news?symbol=asnd&art=082u2148 5) freerealtime.com:8000/news?symbol=asnd&art=082u2146 Anyone know about this? Please respond if you do.

To: gbh who wrote (40848)	3/24/1998 6:18:00 PM
From: pat mudge	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 61433

but the comments about the justification of the high PE by WS is concerning. Yes, and that comment may impact MSFT, but the fact their next two quarters are healthy will keep the rest of the market from tanking. Folks can take money out of MSFT and put it in ASND. From my notes: <<< Fiscal 3Q will be quite good. "Better than expected." Office growing nicely, though may not be sustainable. NT server also growing. PCs, no OEM drop-off. Healthy next Q. Not sure if sustainable. Regionally, Asia "remains weak, though not getting weaker." Expenses --- cost control is good, also improving, but may not be sustainable. This Q we didn't repurchase any stock. 3Q eps will exceed .44 by .04 or more. There is sold growth, but it is slowing. The past three years, average Q growth was 50%. ESP this Q will be less than 30% and may be the highest quarter of calendar '98. The EPS could be highest in '98. "It's an odd time. . . 3 slower growth quarters." Forward P/E is high. No analyst would raise estimates beyond that." Huge amount of growth is in Office. Europe is strong. Increased demand in medium and small organizations. We're up against some tough quarters for comparisons. PC market? No slowdown in North America. Hard to know exactly until numbers are in. Release schedule for Win'98? June --- but not sure how much revenue will be recognized. Pricing flat in Win'95? Yes. NT 5.0? No news. Back Office? Shipping data in summer. (I may not have this right.) Are you doing Office '97? Yes --- no rrelease date set. Win'98 unlikely to duplicate Win'95 in terms of success. Clarify PC unit growth? No change in estimates. Haven't seen any slippage. Mix shift to NT workstation? Trend up a little this Q. Depends on release cycle -- but, yes, should trend up. We don't believe in raising forecast. Big increase has come from Office and BackOffice over PC demand. Some deterioration in NT Server. We'll talk about client-side shipments on earnings call. No radical drops. Asia? Seeing maybe a little better than we feared. Not b/c of uptick in currency or PC shipments, but currency has stabilized. How much slowing because of Asia and PCs versus tough comparisons? Actually we're in a lull in product cycles. NT5 will build and be large. But we're a ways till it ships. Is this unusual? 4Q to 1Q slowdown happens almost every year. From FY96 Q3 to Q4, we dropped .01. Q4 to Q1 F97 to 98 there was a drop. This is when someone asked why they'd called the conference and the CFO gave the answer I gave earlier --- uncertainty in market and extent of their eps excess. Later -- Pat