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Technology Stocks : Ciena (CIEN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pat mudge who wrote (2106)	5/8/1998 6:49:00 PM
From: joe	Respond to of 12623

>>losing WorldCom contract was a big blow. I thought it was pushed back, not lost. Correct me if I'm wrong.<< My understanding of events - and I should probably go back again and reread all notes, double-triple check - is that, last earnings period, CIEN said that the WorldCom contract was delayed/suspended, but no future start up point was determined. CIEN tried to tell the public, that this didn't mean they LOST the contract, but they thought they were somewhat confident (how much, I forget) about getting the contract started again. But they weren't absolutely sure. The market reaction was to assume the worse, that the contract was lost, or one had to assume so, since there was nothing CONCRETE in the future - which to me was a reasonable assumption. My immediate reaction was, there's something going wrong with the MCI-WORLDCOM merger and so a postponement to resolve issues was needed. And when future deployment restarted, if it ever did, then CIEN was still in as good a position as before, provided other future complications didn't arise; like maybe a long wait for merger agreement... I got the impression that most people, at least on this thread, started being very suspicious of competition behind the scenes, wheeling and dealing behind the scenes, technological secrets were kept and exchanged with insiders, AT&T, LU, Bell Atlantic, etc. had ulterior motives which would result in the exclusion of CIEN in these companies' plans for the future. Any thoughts anybody? joe

To: pat mudge who wrote (2106)	5/8/1998 9:22:00 PM
From: MangoBoy	Respond to of 12623

"CIENA has been and remains our DWDM supplier of choice," said John Sidgmore, WorldCom's vice chairman and chief operating officer. "During 1997, CIENA delivered more capacity and at a faster rate than we frankly thought was possible. As a result, our long-distance capacity deployment is ahead of schedule." ciena.com mark

To: pat mudge who wrote (2106)	5/8/1998 9:24:00 PM
From: Miles Rhyne Hoffman, CFA	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12623

Wall Street has reported that WorldCom expanded capacity (and thus bought networking products) two years in advance of need. They changed their expansion strategy to stay one year ahead of demand. Thus WorldCom has to use up one years worth of Ciena's product before resuming purchases. The contract was not lost, it was pushed back. (Of course, this does not mean it has to restart). FYI: I am still not sure why, but telecom companies appear to typically keep 50% of their fiber "dark" and in reserve for future needs. So WorldCom wanting to stay 2 years ahead of the curve makes sense and perhaps going to only one year is reasonable, especially in light of the MCI merger. Does anyone know why telecoms keep "in the dark."