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Technology Stocks : Comverse Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JEFF CHAPMAN who wrote (457)	6/8/1998 12:11:00 PM
From: Beltropolis Boy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1331

via smartmoney: June 2, 1998 Daily Screen Archive THE NEW SMARTMONEY EARNINGS REVISION SCREEN Sometimes, if you upgrade a lemon, it's still a lemon. That's one of the things we learned from the first six months of running the SmartMoney Earnings Revision Screen. Our formula targets companies for which analysts have raised earnings estimates over the previous four months. But as we said last week in our retrospective story on the screen, many of the companies that have made the list have not performed well. And in most cases, the dogs had a history of erratic earnings and price performance -- despite the more current optimism displayed by Wall Street. So this week, we've tried to address those problems by adding two new requirements of the companies that we filter through our screen. (See recipe and screen results.) Each must have displayed earnings acceleration for the six previous quarters. And all must have met or exceeded analysts' estimates for the previous four quarters. Our hope is that this new formula will help eliminate those companies that speed up, only to run out of gas when they round the next turn. As always, however, we must issue this warning: Analysts are inveterate optimists and, therefore, often unreliable. Their sanguine views of a company's earnings prospects are no guarantee of future performance. Your own research must guide your investments. That said, our new formula has identified some interesting candidates; we profile them below. In the meantime, if you want to look at a raw list of all the companies that have been upgraded over the past week, visit our download page for a spreadsheet. Comverse Technology From the time that Comverse (CMVT) announced its intention to acquire rival Boston Technology in August until the release of first quarter results last week, shares of the company's stock lost 8%. Since that quarterly announcement -- the first that includes the combined results of the merged companies -- the stock has soared 15%. Happily, it now sits 48% above where it was when we picked it for our "Best Investments for 1997" portfolio. Why the sudden spurt after so many months of lethargy? Analyst Doug Ashton of Jeffries & Co. thinks skittish investors were just waiting to make sure that the companies were a good fit. A 55% increase in first quarter earnings over last year made a strong case that Comverse and Boston are indeed compatible. Comverse develops advanced services, such as voice mail and call systems, for wireline and wireless phone systems. Its customers include more than 250 telephone carriers, and the combined share of Comverse and Boston amounts to almost half of the market. With Octel, the industry's other major player and a recent Lucent (LU) acquisition, stalling in its pursuit of new customers, Eliot Prince of Salomon Smith Barney thinks Comverse should be the winner going forward. He notes that Boston's wireline strength should complement Comverse's dominance of the wireless market as the company's margins continue to benefit from the merger. "We expected things would get easier [with the merger]," he says. "But not this easy." Analysts expect greater than 30% earnings growth over the next three to five years, and Prince believes the stock could trade at 66 within 12 months. smartmoney.com

To: JEFF CHAPMAN who wrote (457)	6/8/1998 4:07:00 PM
From: Francis Matthews	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1331

NT will buy CMVT or BAY? Somebody said NT had an eye on Bay Networks. That is why Bay surged in the last couple of sessions. CMVT jumped because of its very impressive earnings. If NT or someone wants to buy CMVT, they need to pay at least $65/share.

To: JEFF CHAPMAN who wrote (457)	6/11/1998 9:28:00 PM
From: Mark Ambrose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1331

July 18, 1997, TechWeb News from INTERNETWEEK, Lucent Octel merger. techweb.com Here's an excerpt: ================================================================== Levy said that Lucent did not pay too high a price for Octel. He noted that the $31 per share price is below Octel's all-time high. Octel needs Lucent to help take Octel to the next level of growth, he said. Levy noted that the acquisition might make the voice messaging market even more competitive. He said that Nortel Inc. might be interested in making a similar acquisition because it lacks product in this area. Boston Technology Inc. and Comverse Inc., Plainview, N.Y., are two of Octel's competitors which bigger companies might look at, he said. Boston Technology is making a universal messaging system for AT&T, which also owns a warrant to buy shares in Boston Technology, he said. ================================================================== So ... does AT&T own a warrant to buy shares of Comverse ??