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

To: PeterR1700 who wrote (12022)	7/11/1998 8:20:00 PM
From: Andreas Helke	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21342

I have thought for a long time that Westells focus on CAP modulation technology would eventually hurt them. It has now turned out that generally available DMT chipsets come even later while most telecom companies insist on getting DMT equipment. This put Westell in a difficult position. Another thing is that the serious competition in the field might make it difficult to earn money even if equipment can be sold. Several weeks ago I decided that Orckit looked better than Westell. At that time it sold at a only slightly higher price/sales ratio than Westell. I started the switch by buying more Orckit but decided that Westells price was already that low that I did not want to sell it at a loss. Now Orckit has risen some while Westell is even cheaper. I have made quite a bit of trading profits with Westell in 1997. Those nicely offset the paper losses of my current Westell shares. I was impressed enough with the solutions that Westell provides particularly equipment to plug in in telecom switches and DLCs that I decided to keep my remaining shares for the long term. But I am not really interested in buying more even at todays relatively low prices. I don't really think that Westell is undervalued because they are unprofitable and there is a lot of risk for their future business. I am sitting in Heidelberg germany where I have to pay the Deutsche Telekom $1 to $3 for every hour of local telephone service depending on the time of day. It gets cheaper after 6pm and then again after 9pm. If I would use AOL I would have to pay $3.30 per hour on top of that for internet service. The Telekom is preparing to offer DSL service. But I fear that it will be too expensive to be acceptable. Thanks to the private competition we now have cheap long distance service but the Telekom still has pretty much of a monopoly for local service and data network access. Deutsche Telekom began to prepare for the new competition by doubling the hourly rates for local service 2 or 3 years ago. Andreas