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Technology Stocks : COMS & the Ghost of USRX w/ other STUFF -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scrapps who wrote (16275)	6/22/1998 3:35:00 PM
From: jim bender	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22053

Ericsson to Be 'Opportunistic,' But Price-Wary in Data Buys By MARK BOSLET Dow Jones Newswires PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Telecommunications-equipment maker L.M. Ericsson Telephone Co. said it intends to be "opportunistic" in acquiring data-networking technology. But the Swedish company said its sense of urgency to enter the market will be tempered by a desire not to overpay. "You feel some pressure to do something quickly," said Gary Pinkham, who as vice president of business development and data-networking solutions oversees Ericsson's data-networking business in the U.S. But in a market where company valuations are very high, Ericsson wants to be sure any purchase creates shareholder value, he said. In that vein, Mr. Pinkham said he hasn't talked about a possible combination with 3Com Corp. Rumors have been swirling around Wall Street that Ericsson may be poised to snatch up the maker of modems, network adapter cards and data-networking devices. Mr. Pinkham said he views 3Com's CoreBuilder gigabit switching technology as potentially interesting to Ericsson, as well as the company's U.S. Robotics component and its PalmPilot. But 3Com's exposure to network adapter cards, where technology is expected over time to be swept into a computer's central chips, is less attractive, he said. Mr. Pinkham said Ericsson is interested in four areas of data networking. They are access technology, such as remote-access concentrators and ADSL technology; transport technology, such as wave division multiplexing; asynchronous transfer mode, or ATM, edge and core switches; and Internet protocol technology, such as software and high-performance routers. In the wake of Northern Telecom Ltd.'s proposed acquisition of Bay Networks Inc., there is "a lot of hype going on in the marketplace," Pinkham said, and the list of major data-networking companies is getting shorter. In this environment, Mr. Pinkham continued, he expects Ascend Communications Inc. will be purchased. Wall Street expects companies such as Lucent Technologies Inc. and Tellabs Inc. to be interested. Ericsson, however, is not going to be pressured into making a purchase it doesn't think will fit, he said. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, an Ericsson executive said the company is looking at 10 networking companies in the U.S. and has begun acquisition discussions with three, each in the several-hundred-million-dollar range.