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Technology Stocks : Comverse Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Beltropolis Boy who wrote (635)	2/16/1999 11:48:00 AM
From: NotNeiderhoffer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1331

CM, I will run thru a couple of things quickly and then back to lurk mode. These are in no particular order First they said that "visibility is good" "margin visibility is good-Gross profit margins should be flat to up" with all other line items pretty much stable ******* Brazil is only 1-1.5% of revenue *** they talked about the switch vendors who have repeatedly tried to crack into this market and given up Siemens and Ericsson occasionally come to comverse to bundle the products into biz they are bidding ****** they have a toehold in cable telephony products and should benefit from the buildout-did not get too specific but they are there *** The European PTT's should get moving soon due to increased competition and get more aggressive about marketing voice mail and also lower pricing for the product-this is a good long term growth driver for cmvt ** Win rate on on rfp's continues north of 50% sales cycles have not lengthened ********** CNS has 275 network operators as customers 150 are wireless currently have 13/20 of worlds largest phone companies interesting point to be made here If you remember some time ago cmvt lost the huge British Telecom contract to Unisys Unisys has recently outlined their goals and future emphasis and Telecom is not one of the areas they intend to focus on this is great news in general-whoever made that buying decision at BT is a dolt Time for a Forklift upgrade!!! of course CMVT lost this biz but perhaps Unisys will be less likely to ever win a contract again given the lack of commitment they seem to be making to the telecomm business in general ********* The DGM&S and CIS spinoffs/tracking stock situation this is intersting and the company has been floating trial balloons past wall street the past few months trying to get the news out and get people used to this idea I don't think anything is imminent but down the road (fall '99) something could transpire DGM&S is working on some very cool stuff with MSFT on SS7 technology but this work won't ramp until later this year DGM&S' valuation is not clear ($250 million++???) perhaps they can get a market cap per PH.D similar to Uniphase (just kiddin) or we can key off the recent Perot Systems deal to try to figure out what this is worth Comverse Info Systems- spinoff will likely come later and the division currently accounts for 10% of revenue- this biz has very high barriers to entry and biz has been a little soft the last year because for regulatory reasons * Cash continues to build pushing $600 million *** the other key point is that all their enhanced services (one touch call return, etc) are just beginnning to take off and should be able to sustain the companys growth rate over the next few years as these services are offered to customers. ******** finally i have a point about the recent end of the day volatility in the stock a couple of weeks ago the stock was added to the NDX the weighting of the stock is small compared to the big tech names however, the index is subject to huge end of the day buying and selling pressure that is somewhat "artificial" Cramer has been going off about this phenomena over at theStreet.com anyone looking to buy or sell the stock should be aware of this and try to take advantage of it that is all NotgoingtopostforawhileNeiderhoffer