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Technology Stocks : Broadcom (BRCM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (230)	4/29/1998 6:13:00 PM
From: Moe	Respond to of 6531

Forbes November/97 - Broadcom "We won't be on your small-companies list," boasts Henry Nicholas, 37, cofounder and chief executive of Broadcom. "At the rate we're growing, we're going to be on your big-companies list by the year 2000." Nicholas has reason to crow. Intel and 3Com are snapping up Broadcom's high-speed data chips for their Ethernet cards. Motorola buys Broadcom chips for its cable modems. And Scientific-Atlanta and NextLevel Systems (formerly General Instrument) use the company's chips for digital television set-top boxes that feed cable signals into your television. Privately held Broadcom's revenues are between $30 million and $40 million. Nicholas predicts that by the year 2000 the market for the Irvine, Calif.-based company's products will generate $1 billion in sales. Why is Nicholas so optimistic? Broadcom's digital transmission chips are used on nearly every cable modem shipped today, and the company has a growing business selling a version of those chips for high-speed ADSL (asymmetrical digital subscriber line) modems running over standard telephone lines. Broadcom also sells chips used in digital broadcast satellite equipment and digital radio, as well as network data routers, hubs and switches. Remarkably, the 185-person company has been profitable since its inception in 1991. Nicholas and his partner, Henry Samueli, 43, who is the company's chief technical officer, got started with a handful of development contracts from big companies, notably including Scientific Atlanta, which makes cable television gear. Nicholas and Samueli already had a winner in their curricula vitae: They helped found PairGain Technologies, a publicly held data communications equipment supplier. Broadcom hasn't yet taken advantage of Wall Street's fascination with computer companies to go public-"We haven't needed the money," Nicholas explains-but it probably will. At that point it will probably make the 200 Best list.