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

To: polarisnh who wrote (42980)	4/8/1998 8:58:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 61433

FUND VIEW - Transamerica buys sector leaders Reuters Story - April 08, 1998 19:42 %DPR %US %LEI %ENT %ELI %BUS %RCH %HOT %FUND DELL MSFT INTC CSCO MIR PIXR TRK DIS V%REUTER P%RTR NEW YORK, April 8 (Reuters) - Transamerica Investment Services portfolio manager Philip Treick said on Wednesday his strategy was to buy shares of the leading and often biggest companies in specific industries, for his $32 million fund. "The nature of our mutual fund is to identify leaders in the industry," Treick told Reuters in an interview. "We don't buy the group, we buy the leaders in the group...We try to identify companies with a scale advantage versus their competitors." The dominant companies were often more profitable and grew faster compared to their rivals, he said. Among the fund's largest holdings are Dell Computer Corp , Microsoft Corp and Intel Corp , leaders in the various segments of the technology market. "We have a lot of technology," Treick said. "I am not nervous about technology -- although I would be if I owned second-tier technology companies -- because the first-tier companies have defendable margins and opportunities." But the smaller technology companies did not have "moats" around their business and were vulnerable to encroachment by their larger competitors, Treick said. Among networking companies, Treick owned and vastly preferred shares of Cisco Systems Inc , because of its resources and strategy to send voice over the internet. "I like Cisco but I don't like the other networking companies," he said. " The fund, which has risen about 26 percent so far this year, also has a sizable position in the entertainment industry through its holdings of Mirage Resorts Inc , digital animation company PIXAR and auto raceway owner and operator Speedway Motorsports Inc , he said. Mirage has been a top gaming stock although Trieck said he was slightly wary about all of the new capacity in Las Vegas. Speedway owned and operated motor raceways in all of the leading media markets in the United States, which gave it a leg up against rivals in the growing industry, he said. "Television ratings, attendance and sponsorship dollars are all going up at the same time," Treick said. "NASCAR racing is spreading from the southeast to the west...driven by all of these three things at the same time." The company has tracks in Dallas, Texas, Atlanta, Georgia, Charlotte, North Carolina, San Francisco and Bristol, Tennessee and had solid expansion plans, he said. PIXAR, which created the popular animated film "Toy Story", has a recently-renegotiated deal with giant media company Disney which gives it an advantage against other competitors in both marketing and distribution, he said. "PIXAR by itself has no scale but it gets that from Disney," Treick said.

To: polarisnh who wrote (42980)	4/8/1998 9:00:00 PM
From: djane	Respond to of 61433

Networker plans in Asia. No specific ASND reference [Could really help 2H98 ASND sequential growth] Excerpt: "He [CSCO operations VP in Asia] forecast that sales in Asia this year would rise by more than 50 per cent, noting that the telecoms and enterprise markets would be the drivers of growth. To: mindmeld (13221 ) From: JRH Wednesday, Apr 8 1998 5:11PM ET Reply # of 13226 <NAR> To all: I came across this story today. I think that you will find it of interest: from Business Times on 16 Mar 1998: Cisco, 3Com and Bay Networks expanding in Asia Opening of new facilities and manpower boost despite regional crisis Networking leader Cisco Systems and its main competitors, 3Com and Bay Networks, are expanding their operations in Asia despite the financial turmoil. Cisco plans to open new facilities in Singapore and the region, said William Nuti, operations vice-president of Cisco Asia last week........ The most ambitious is Cisco. Mr Nuti said the company would more than double its staff in Singapore to 85 by July this year. And for the next financial year ending July 1999, the staff strength would be boosted to 125. Mr Nuti said it was "most likely" that Cisco would have to move its Singapore office in Wheelock Place to bigger premises next year. In the region, the biggest growth in staff strength would be in China. Cisco will hire "well over 100" new employees by July, raising staff strength to more than 250. Another 100 is expected to be added by FY99. Mr Nuti said Cisco would be setting up a technical assistance centre in China in the next 12 months. "We want to prepare ourselves for much larger growth." He conceded, however, that the regional turmoil had affected Asia's contribution to group revenue. For the quarter ended Oct 25, 1997, Asia's contribution (including Japan) to revenues shrank to around 12 per cent from the usual 15 per cent. Cisco posted full-year revenue of US$6.4 billion (S$10.3 billion) for the year ended July 26, 1997. But Mr Nuti said: "Although our Asian growth has slowed, it has not slowed to the extent that we are thinking of retrenchment. Markets are cyclical. This crisis will end. Our investments in Singapore are for the long term. We hope to take away market share from our competitors in Asean." He forecast that sales in Asia this year would rise by more than 50 per cent, noting that the telecoms and enterprise markets would be the drivers of growth. He pointed out that Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia were continuing to invest in telecoms despite being hit by the currency crisis. Cisco has traditionally been supplying data networks to companies and recently expanded to the telecoms market by merging voice with data networks. Mr Nuti said Cisco would be shortly announcing some new Asian customer contracts in the voice telecoms area.

To: polarisnh who wrote (42980)	4/8/1998 9:00:00 PM
From: Peter Yang	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 61433

IMHO, ASND'll see the high for this month tomorrow unless there's really something big in CC. I agree with what Briefing.com said "Briefing believes potential downside risk outweighs possible upside reward." In addition, the underlying TA for the market is weakening. This time "buy at the dip" might not work anymore.

To: polarisnh who wrote (42980)	4/8/1998 9:00:00 PM
From: Joseph Colombo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 61433

<<Mary Meeker is assuming that the major carriers will be expanding the Internet backbone fast enough to relieve the existing bottlenecks, support the doubling of Internet every 3 months, as well as, provide more than enough bandwidth to support all of the new full-motion video applications that are appearing every day? I don't think so!>> Steven, Can you imagine what will have to happen to the backbone of the Internet when everyone at home has a cable modem or x.DSL. A few months back INTC,CPQ,MSFT RBOC's (and a few others including AWRE) said x.DSL by Christmas 98. What a bottleneck. Things may get slower before they get faster. These next two to three years will be like railroads last 1800's. It's a new frontier. Joe