A week of acquisitions, speculation and rumours

The billion dollar acquisitions by Vignette and Web Methods, the speculation over Baan`s new owners and the rumours among the major European telecomms operators dominated the international world of IT and telecommunications last week.

This week should see a Microsoft ruling, although whatever the outcome, it is bound to be contested.

Paul Booth, Columnist, ITWeb

At home, the Dimension Data US acquisition and that by Bryan Hattingh of Spicer Professional Services stole local headlines.

• we saw satisfactory full-year returns from Top-Tech (revenue well up, but income only up some 15%, and second half of year not so good as the first half);
• disappointing full-year figures from OSI Holdings (revenue and income both up but margins squeezed);
• very good interims from Vesta Technology (revenue well up, but margins heavily squeezed);
• the suspension of the shares of Stantronics; and
• a profit warning from Crux Technologies.

[Local]

[Cautionary]

[Listing]

[Result]

Other local news included:

• the appointment of Jerome Chalice as the sole MD of Armada and Janette Cumming as the new CEO of Dimension Data SilverLine.

• France Telecom is in the final throes of agreeing a deal to purchase Orange from Vodafone for $44 billion and intends to shed its 7% interest in TeleMex to raise $2.5 billion;
• Lucent is likely to buy optical equipment networking company Chromatis Networks in a deal worth about $5.5 billion;
• Corel has managed to raise $15 million to keep it going a little longer;
• Baan`s shares have been oscillating with various news snippets indicating that it is likely to sell out soon, with UK`s Invensys currently the hot favourite; and
• for the first time Microsoft has delayed a major "vision, strategy and technology road map" announcement as a direct result of the Department of Justice case, which now includes a possibility of a three-way split rather than a two-way break-up.
• Additionally, Softbank, Japan`s leading Internet investment company, announced its intentions to list its holdings companies.

[International]

Other international news included:

• the appointments of Gary Goldfarb as CEO of Fusion Networks;
• the name change of ODS Networks to Intrusion;
• the announcement by SAP that it intends to restructure its US operations; and
• job losses announced by JD Edwards.

Excellent figures were reported by Business Resource group, Catalyst Semiconductor and Ditech Comms.

Losses came from 3dfx Interactive, Agile Software, AML Comms, Caldera Systems, City Telecom (HK), CTC Comms, eGlobe, eOn Comms, FDN, GigaMedia, Inso, Intasys, Intelliquis, JD Edwards, Madison River Comms, Memory Corp, Memotec, NT&T, Pacific Gateway Exchange, Peerless Systems, QAD, SoftQuad Software, STC, Telenetics and VA Linux Systems.

Good numbers were recorded by Allstar Systems, Ansoft, Cable Design Technologies, Cadcentre Group, Dataram, Group 1 Software, Intuit, NTTDoCoMo, SemTech, Ultimate Electronics, Unify and Xeta Technologies; and satisfactory numbers were reported by MTI, NETsilicon, Printrak and Telxon (back in the black).

Mediocre returns came from Atos SA, Novell, Singapore Telecomms, Softbank and The IT Group.

Very poor results came from Align-Rite, Logisoft (but back in the black) and Microlog (but back in the black).

Other financial news included profit warnings from ATI Technologies, British Telecom, CellStar, Novell, Performance Technologies and Printronix; share split announcements from CDW Computer Centres, Micrel and Rambus.

There was also a successful IPO from Sonus Networks (fibre optic network equipment), a good IPO from Centillium Comms (Comms chips), and a withdrawn IPO by Impresse, an e-commerce firm serving the printing industry.

Locally

Acuity (-40%)

Brainware (-33.3%)

Bynx (+79.5%)

C-Tech (+60%)

EC Hold (-31.6%)

I-Tech (-21.1%)

Micrologix (-25%)

MMW (+37.5%)

Spicer (-58.3%)

Stantronics (-28.6%)

ValueCom (-35%)

Y3K (-25%)

Zaptronix (-21.1%)

Internationally

Ancor Comms (-27.7%)

ARIS (-33.3%)

Baan (+88.9%)

ConMat Technologies (+36%)

Digital River (-32%)

E-Stamp (-50%)

Evans & Sutherland (-35.2%)

LanOptics (-28.1%)

MDSI Mobile Data Solutions (-31.5%)

Objective Systems Integrators (-31%)

QAD (-44.3%)

SCO (-29.2%)

Westell Technologies (-33.3%)

This week should see a Microsoft ruling, although whatever the outcome, it is bound to be contested; and a handful of local full-year and half-year results, including those of Idion and ITI.