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

To: jach who wrote (17876)	10/7/1998 1:27:00 AM
From: donss	Respond to of 77400

jach, I think you are correct, S&P and Nasdaq futures are way up right now. cme.com I predict we will at least have an up morning. Happy trading, Don

To: jach who wrote (17876)	10/7/1998 7:24:00 AM
From: MMW	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 77400

I did buy some CSCO share in last couple days. It was falling into the range I would like buy. Here is a news I think it would cheer the CSCO buyers. SMARTMONEY ONLINE: Time To Buy Cisco SmartMoney Interactive By Tiernan Ray NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Has Christmas arrived early? At a recent $50 a share, networking equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) is now devilishly close to the $46 target price we named in our October magazine feature Dream Stocks at Target Prices. We never expected it would happen so soon. But a few events have conspired to bring Cisco within our reach. Most importantly, over the past two weeks communications equipment makers Northern Telecom (NT) and Alcatel (ALA) announced that they expect to disappoint the Street's expectations in this quarter because of slowing sales to traditional telecommunications customers. Second, on Monday the company confirmed that the FTC had begun an investigation into possible discussions of market manipulation by Cisco and Lucent Technologies (LU). And, finally, some investors fear that Lucent, Cisco's greatest rival, may soon purchase a large Cisco competitor, such as Ascend Communications (ASND). Cisco is a dream purchase at $46. That target price is based on the company's expected growth rate over the next two years (30%) as well as the premium at which it has typically traded above the S&P 500 (40%). And we don't believe either of those things is likely to change soon. Cisco's recent fall is in line with that of the entire communications equipment sector, which, according to our Sector Tracking Applet, is off 20% in the past month on fears that demand will slow as companies tighten their capital spending budgets. But there is a big difference between the products sold by Nortel and Alcatel and those sold by Cisco and its competitors 3Com (COMS) and Ascend. Nortel and Alcatel sell older equipment, the stuff that's been powering communications for several decades now. Cisco is selling the new stuff, whose demand is mostly Internet-related. Cisco's products include routers that direct traffic on the Internet; gigabit speed switches that can increase bandwidth on corporate local area networks strained for capacity by the rise of Internet access; so-called multiservice switches that allow competitive local telephone companies to start offering Internet telephony to customers; and networking devices to feed the explosion in small businesses across the U.S. Demand for this new stuff has increased at a 35% rate over the past five years, more than double the 15.6% growth rate for the old equipment, according to market research firm Dataquest. And there is no sign that demand is about to slow. According to some estimates, Internet traffic is doubling every three months. As Bill Henry, a vice president at Bellcore's Business Consulting unit puts it, there's pressure on capital budgets around the world. But, companies will be less willing to cut spending on data networking equipment than they are on old-style equipment. "The pressure is on everybody, but data [networking] equipment is viewed as the larger growth opportunity" by the telephone carriers, says Henry. That's why Lucent and Nortel and so many other traditional telecom providers are building comparable products or buying networkers outright, as did Nortel when it bought Bay Networks for $7.7 billion earlier this year. There's another reason everybody wants to be in data networking equipment. It is more profitable. Cisco has a gross margin of 65%, compared with 40% for Northern Telecom and 45% for Lucent. And that's another reason why its P/E ratio is so much higher. The company is currently trading at 34.5 times next y ear's earnings versus 16.9 for Northern Telecom. (Lucent is actually comparable, at 35.8 times forward earnings.) At a price of 46, Cisco would sell at 58.9 times fiscal year 1999 (July) earnings. That is about double its expected earnings growth rate. Could that growth slow? Possibly. If turmoil abroad finally unglues the domestic economy and spoils projects in Asia and Latin America, it is a concern for Cisco as much as any other tech company. But, with such a high growth rate, Cisco can afford to suffer a bit of turmoil. It could even afford to see estimates rolled back a penny or two after the third and fourth quarters of this year. But with its price as low as it is, with its rich reserves of cash on hand (about $3.76 billion in cash and non-cash assets on the books), and with a commanding lead in one of the few sectors of the information technology business whose growth is guaranteed, the effects upon the stock of such turmoil should be limited. That makes Cisco one of the more sensible bets you'll find these days. For more information and analysis of companies and mutual funds, visit SmartMoney Interactive at smartmoney.com More about Cisco Systems Inc.: From leading business publications From The Wall Street Journal Powered by Quote Agent® and News Agent® from IDD Information Services Copyright © 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

To: jach who wrote (17876)	10/7/1998 3:21:00 PM
From: Gerald Walls	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 77400

Tomorrow will be a BIG UP day, Oct the 7th. IMO, nasdaq will be 50+. mkt and especially networking sector is way way oversold now. Your predictions aren't so good anymore, are they? Keep it up though. You'll be lucky again at some point and then you can post your normal 30 "I told you so" posts. Of course we still have 40 minutes for the NASDAQ to rise 95 points to make you right.