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Technology Stocks : Loral Space & Communications -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeff Vayda who wrote (4148)	8/7/1998 9:58:00 AM
From: Valueman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10852

Re: ViaSat-- Numbers were in line, but the growth was not the type VSAT has had historically. This is not odd in that they have a "lumpy" revenue stream. Contract awards are very important to them. Backlog was down. This was attributed to two things--a change in business mix to more orders that are booked and shipped in the same quarter and to the lack of one of those large defense orders in recent months. They are actively pursuing these large contracts(optimistic) in the areas of simulators, DAMA modems, network controllers, MIDS radios, network encryption, and spread spectrum terminals. These are all areas with potentially large contract awards. The increase in inventory comes from higher raw materials that will be going into the Starwire DAMA terminals later in the year. Defense--UHF DAMA modems are being successfully sold to our allies as they implement UHF communications. They were awarded an R&D contract to modify Star terminals for weather terminals(much larger market there).More add-on orders possible, as well as upgrades of current modems to increase data capabilities. Upgrades to manpack modems will be possible next year--that is a very large market. Commercial--This quarter much better than Q4, and Q2 looking even better. The key to commercial sales is Calypso, the low cost Starwire terminal. It is half the price of Aurora and can be configured for low cost rural telephony, business, or SCPC terminal w/ network abilities. Starwire now has voice response support, voice mail, auto call back, and prepaid capabilities. DAMA IP is showing a lot of interest. The partnerships for satellite telephoiny are making progress and they stick with previous comments about making an announcement this year. PCMA should really help them discriminate vs. competition. Tests over sats and in all situations have gone well. Voice version this year. A new PCMA patent has been applied for relating to interactive satellite TV and two way IP. Very important area. DAMA networks in China and India expanding--will be beta sites for Calypso this month. Expect Calypso to roll out in big way in early 99. My take? Street will probably be unimpressed with present numbers and growth. I am not particularly impressed myself. But, they have quite variable quarters. This could change in a matter of weeks. The defense area has several potential $15-20 million orders, and the commercial side is wide open. These PCMA improvements are going to distance them from competition in a big way---that is, in applications where quality matters. So, once again, we must wait for developments. They are very smart engineers--that is the bottom line. Their products are the best.