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Strategies & Market Trends : The Thread Formerly Known as No Rest For The Wicked -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: margin_man who wrote (29161)	4/19/1999 11:15:00 AM
From: Sheri Kohn	Respond to of 90042

yes, CELL looks good today. Also found this on FORE.... From The street.com thestreet.com By Kevin Petrie Staff Reporter 4/19/99 11:00 AM ET SAN FRANCISCO -- Like its peers, Tellabs (TLAB:Nasdaq) might go shopping for acquisitions. Unlike its peers, the Lisle, Ill.-based telecommunications supplier isn't desperate to buy. Other telecom firms are rushing to procure Internet technology. In the U.S., Lucent (LU:NYSE), faced with potentially slowing sales of its voice switches, has committed $20 billion in stock to acquiring Ascend (ASND:Nasdaq) in a deal expected to close by the end of June. One possible target is Fore Systems (FORE:Nasdaq), with a market cap of $2.8 billion and revenue of $635 million. Fore Systems is hardly small -- it has a full sales force and legacy business with corporations -- but its technology would make a snug fit. "Fore would complement [Tellabs' cross-connects] very nicely," says CIMI's Nolle. Already Tellabs has rigged its cross-connects for ATM traffic. Fore Systems might benefit from such a combination: It has superior ATM switches, but as a small company, it has not garnered lucrative contracts with the large carriers that Tellabs has served for years. Many in the industry regard Fore as a prime takeover target. Queried about Fore, Birck said wryly, "From what I hear, they have halfway-decent technology." A Fore official did not return a call for comment. Birck says he is particularly interested in network routers, which manage data traffic in a more sophisticated fashion than switches. Wilmington, Mass.-based NetCore is field-testing a router that Nolle says would serve as a nice bridge between Tellabs' current technology and Internet systems. NetCore intends to ship the product by late June. Since Siemens bought Argon Networks last month, NetCore is perhaps the last viable candidate in its niche. NetCore Vice President John Shaw says the company plans to go public later this year, but would listen to the right buyout offer. He declined to comment on whether the company is currently in talks. NetCore has raised $35 million in three rounds of private financing. And Salix, a former consulting firm based in Gaithersburg, Md., also is field-testing a switch that handles signals from both voice-based networks and Internet systems. Rivals also are pouncing fast on this sector: Alcatel snapped up its peer Castle Networks last month for $300 million in cash. Similar switch companies include Sonus and Transmedia. Salix has raised $15 million through private financing. A Salix official could not be reached immediately for comment on the possibility of being acquired. "If I had to fill up my dance card and I were Tellabs, I would acquire NetCore, Fore and Salix," says Nolle. His firm does consulting for numerous communications companies, including those three. Tellabs subscribes to his research.