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

To: Tim Luke who wrote (58919)	1/13/1999 1:17:00 AM
From: Foad	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 61433

Lucent To Buy Ascend For Up To $22 Bln - Sources This is even better....WOW dailynews.yahoo.com Tuesday January 12 11:47 PM ET Lucent To Buy Ascend For Up To $22 Bln - Sources By Duncan Martell PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:LU - news), the world's largest telecommunications equipment maker, will announce Wednesday the acquisition of Ascend Communications, the fourth largest maker of computer networking equipment, in a deal valued between $19 billion and $22 billion in cash and stock, sources familiar with the situation said. Lucent and Ascend declined to comment. The exact terms of the deal could not be determined. A source close to Ascend said a formal announcement would be made at about 0530 EST Wednesday morning. The deal would be the largest merger yet as the markets for voice and data networks continue to blur. While Lucent, which has traditionally provided voice products for telecommunications companies, has made some small acquisitions to enter the data networking market, an acquisition of Ascend would put it in a position to challenge networking leader Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO - news), Ascend's chief rival. Through the deal Lucent will gain access to Ascend's sophisticated data networking technology, while Lucent's greater financial resources and large sales force will put more muscle behind Ascend's products, analysts said. Lucent and Ascend, long rumored as merger partners, have been in talks for months, industry sources said. Discussions intensified in recent weeks as Lucent's stock strengthened, which gave Lucent an increasingly powerful currency with which to pursue an Ascend acquisition. Shares of Lucent recovered from $57 in October, during broad weakness in the stock market, to a record high of $119.94 last week. Tuesday, shares of Lucent fell $5.06 to $107.88 in heavy New York Stock Exchange composite trade, adding to losses Monday after investors feared a potential Ascend acquisition might dilute Lucent's earnings, analysts said. Shares of Ascend fell $1.75 to $74.94 on Nasdaq, easing slightly after jumping more than $5 Monday. An acquisition of Ascend would follow Lucent's announcement Monday that it agreed to buy closely held Kenan Systems Corp., a billing software company, for $1.4 billion. Lucent has made a small series of acquisitions since it was spun off from AT&T Corp. (NYSE:T - news) in 1996, but it has been widely expected to make a massive acquisition since October, when it was freed from a 2-year restriction that prevented it from pursuing acquisitions using so-called pooling-of-interest accounting. Acquisitions made using pooling-of-interest accounting allow companies to avoid certain charges that would hurt profits over a long period. ''This is a strong move for Lucent, they need to build their product portfolio and attack the data market. Ascend needed to align itself with one of the major deep pocket players,'' said one industry analyst who declined to be named. Even with an acquisition of Ascend, Lucent will still have areas of weakness in serving international markets and providing networking equipment to large corporations, analysts said.

To: Tim Luke who wrote (58919)	1/13/1999 1:33:00 AM
From: Alok Sinha	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 61433

Talk about timing. Sold naked Puts (Feb 65s) of ASND for 2 1/2, bought another 400 at 75 3/4 today. Now the question is: How much will LU fall tomorrow. Does it make sense to bail out in the morning and get back in later. I don't share everybody's enthusiam that LU will be substantial higher in a few months. NT/BAY merger and COMS/USRX meregr did not really pay off for me , so I am tempted to take money off the table at $90 per share. Any guesses for tomorrow's action. Alok