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Technology Stocks : MRV Communications (MRVC) opinions? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Robert G. Harrell who wrote (12354)	3/3/1999 2:43:00 PM
From: Bruce L	Respond to of 42804

Re: 25,000 block trade Trading was pretty dull and slow all day until a few minutes ago when a 25K block passed at the ask (6 7/8). Until just a few minutes before that the bid-ask was 6 15/16- 7 with only a single MM at that ask. I sort of got the impression MMs were trying to entice buyers in this COMS-weakened market. Either thBruceat or we had some holders that got bored and started to sell. In any case, the 25K block is a net plus; someone is accumulating albeit on the cheap.

To: Robert G. Harrell who wrote (12354)	3/3/1999 3:29:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Respond to of 42804

<<(I now have another big loss to almost balance my MRVC loss>> and here I always thought symetry was good! <g> <<I notice the equipment is for exotic materials like GaAs, InP, InGaP, etc. Do we know what MRVC's ASICs are made from? If they are GaAs, why don't they have them made by VTSS or PMCS? Would that invite the theft of proprietary designs? >> Bob, you raise some very interesting points GalliumArsenide chips are ultra fast - faster than CMOS in the past, I know. I'm not current on the comparison today, though. I don't know what they use today. With today's technology it seems to me you either have to patent it or protect it in other ways. MRVC's technology is all proprietary (no Galilao GE chips, for example). If they ship it out, they are in effect giving others their techniques and code, design specs, etc. They would have confidentiality agreements of course, and legal recourse if they got ripped off, but is that really a gamble worth taking? You are in effect betting your company's survival against minor production cost savings. ANALysts are always on MRVC because they DON'T offload this, but it seems to me to me their way is the smarter thing to do. There are advantages to having everything in house too, such as shorter lead time to market. Look how quickly after the Xyplex purchase they developed these new products. I'm pretty sure they didn't have all the necessary software code pre-Xyplex. Fast time to market is critical - especially right now. In the next 12-24 months many carriers are going to be making decisions. MRVC's products not only have to be out, but BETA tested for some months before carriers may buy on big. Thats how ASND beat CSCO - by getting the GX-550 to market and into carrier's hands ahead of CSCO. Re: fast GaAs chips - super-fast routers and other networking gear need to have the code in super-fast ASICs to process data at terabit speeds, so their use of GaAS seems to make perfect sense at first glance. I'll look at your other comments and respond (if I can) later.