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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Shread who wrote (15823)	8/6/1998 1:56:00 PM
From: Sawtooth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 77400

<<I've got to say one thing about CSCO: this is the best, the most consistent 30% grower I have ever seen ....... This is the best company of the 90s. Period.>> With all due respect and a certain amount of agreement w/your opinion as evidenced by my LT investment in Csco, I am always interested in why people think Csco is such a hands-down, peerless investment vs. other great companies like Lucent. If you run a 30 month (Lu's "birth"), 100 day, or even a 90 day (getting pretty short term here for my tastes but to take a look at it, anyway) comparative return chart for Lu and Csco, Lu beats the return, although not tremendously. My point is not to bash Csco in any way but Lucent sure seems to be doing some outstanding things. The p/e's for Csco and Lu are about the same, Csco's p/s at 11 is significantly more than Lu's at 4 but with 4X revenues (for Lu) and about the same net income (Csco and Lu) the p/s makes more sense. Of course, everyone recognizes that Lu is not near as established and fine-tuned as Csco (yet) so the margins are not totally comparable (granted, the different businesses have different historical avg margins), and the cash-only acquisition restrictions (Lu) also affects net income to a certain extent, temporarily. My interest is what my ROI is going to be five years out. I think both companies are outstanding but my question is: Do you really think, five years out, your investment return on Csco will be significantly better than your return would be in Lu? If so, why? Of course, the nicest thing is we can all own both companies, should we choose. Regards. ...Tim