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Technology Stocks : Ascend Communications (ASND) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Matt Meagh who wrote (54379)	9/17/1998 9:09:00 PM
From: sbeckbal	Respond to of 61433

Ken Fehrnstrom, Ascend VP Business Development, is the management guy who humorously remarked during the CNBC segment, "We had a meeting the other day about Lucent, and we decided that we probably were not going to acquire them. We took that out of the possibilities..." Yes, Matt, it did seem like an odd thing to say, almost as if he were attempting to hide the facts within the joke. I, too, found the remark somewhat provocative. Shortly thereafter, to make matters even more interesting, CNNfn broadcast the following exchange between Ms.(sorry) Bruce Francis and Richard McGinn, Lucent CEO. BF: "Would you rule out any major King Kong acquisitions at this point?" RM: "Well, I haven't thought of any King Kong acquisitions, but I would say that I think our thinking is consistent, that is, that we have to make sure that within the context of our strategy--focused on the highest growth segments--that we're gonna make good, sound financial choices as well and then work to integrate those businesses. And I would say that we have to make sure that any activites that we do have in the area of acquiring companies of any material size have to be accretive to the business." Talk about evasive doublespeak! Then, when McGinn was questioned specifically about the Data Networking Market, he admitted that the segment was growing 25% annually, and that Lucent would continue to grow "organically" and "through acquisitions." Hmmm...