Ample acquisitions

The Agilent/OSI, Broadcom/VisionTech, and Ricoh/Lanier acquisitions, and the happenings at Lernout & Haupsie dominated the international world of IT and telecommunications last week.

Siemens is in the throes of a reorganisation to assist its new thrust into the US.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

At home, the buy-out of LogicalOptions by Brait, the closure of Oxbridge and the flurry of local results stole most of the local headline space.

• we saw good year-end figures from Vesta Technology Holdings (margins heavily squeezed);
• a full-year loss from Elexir (revenue down) and Sekunjalo Investments (revenue also down);
• a disastrous set of full-year figures from Dectronic (no revenue and a large loss);
• excellent nine-month figures from LogicalOptions (earnings significantly up) and Paracon (revenue and earnings well up on last year`s 12 month figures);
• poor interim figures from Cape Empowerment Trust;
• a half-year loss from Casey Investment Holdings (also revenue well down), CIH (revenue also slightly down but loss still greater than revenue) and Planit Technology Holdings (revenue also down);
• the satisfactory listing of Integrear on the development capital market of the JSE via a reverse listing into Managed Care SA;
• the change of year-end to June from December for UAM and its subsidiaries; and
• a profit warning from Siltek.

[Local]

Other local news included:

• the President`s Award for Export Achievement and the Minister`s Award for Technological Excellence both going to UEC;
• the first annual Telkom Comms and Technology award going to Nathi Sukazi of Business Report, with Lesley Stones and Marina Bidoli being the runners-up;
• the closure of the doors at Oxbridge; and
• the nomination of Africam as Bain & Company`s top e-business in SA.

• we saw the announcement by Alcatel that it won`t try to take-over Thomson-CSF;
• LG and Philips Electronics are in negotiations to merge their mobile phone units;
• Freeserve (UK) and Wanadoo (France) are in take-over talks;
• Siemens is in the throes of a reorganisation to assist its new thrust into the US;
• Bull is to split into two entities (one focusing on services and the other on infrastructure and systems) and sell-off non-strategic assets worth more than $340 million;
• BT and United News & Media will sell-off their joint venture Internet service provider, Line One;
• E-Stamp is to phase-out its Internet postage business;
• MarchFirst, the Internet services firm, is realigning its business strategy and restructuring its operations;
• NEC and Hitachi are to jointly invest some $1.45 billion in a new RAM chip production plant in Japan;
• Kingston Comms is to spin-out its DSL business;
• Vodafone and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young have formed a joint venture to offer mobile commerce services; and
• JENS has signed separate two-way agreements with British Telecom`s BT Ignite unit and AT&T to provide international data centre services.

[International]

Other international news included:

• the appointments of David Bullis as CEO of Loudeye Technologies, Stephen Courter as chairman and CEO of NEON Comms, John Daane as president and CEO of Altera, David Dorman as president of AT&T, Jaime Ellertson as CEO of S1, Thomas Holtrop as chairman of T-Online, James "Chip" S Mahan III (founder and ex-CEO) as chairman of S1, Jean-Francois Pontal as CEO of Orange (after floatation early next year), Yitzhak Sharir as CEO of Sapiens, and Neal Waddington as CEO of JNI;
• the resignations of Dani Falk, CEO of Sapiens, and Hans Snook, CEO of Orange (after floatation early next year); and
• job cut announcements form Covad Comms, DSL.net, E-Stamp, Intraware, iXL and Xerox.

We saw excellent figures from ADC, Brocade, Credence Systems, ProsoftTraining.com, Stratos Lightwave and Uticom.

Losses came from ACD Systems, Affordable Telecomms, ANTs software.com, Atlantic Telecom, Avana Comms, CanWest Global Comms, Cedar Group, Certicom, Champion Communication Services, Crossroads Systems, Cumetrix Data Systems, eBT International, EleTel, eOn Comms, Futuremedia, Global Payment Technologies, Intasys, InterX, Korea Thrunet, Merant, MGI Software, Optio Software, Osicom Technologies, PhotoWorks, Plaintree Systems, PrimaCom, Procom Technology, QAD, SSE Telecom, Synopsys, T-Online, Trintech Group, VimpelCom, Vocalis, VTEL and XKO Group.

Good numbers were recorded by Cadence Design Technologies, City Telecom (Hong Kong), Deutsche Telekom, Microsemi (back in the black) and Tech Data.

Satisfactory results were posted by DocuCorp, International Datacasting, Marconi, Plasmon and Wind River Systems.

Mediocre returns came from NetSilicon and Swisscom, while very poor results came from SeaChange International.

Other financial news included profit warnings from Altera, ChipPac, Cognex, Cypress Semiconductor, Gateway, Intraware, iXL, MarchFirst, Micron Electronics, Swisscom and XO Comms; and share split announcements from Brocade, eGlobe (reverse) and NxGen Networks.

Additionally, UK Internet software company RiverSoft has significantly scaled back its planned IPO, Telenor cut its IPO price, Adaptec postponed its IPO for spin-off Roxio, Formus Comms withdrew its IPO, Metabox revised its 1999 figures significantly down, and Lernout & Haupsie filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Locally

Accord (-23.1%)
CompuClearing (+38.4%)
Crux (-24.1%)
JemTech (-33.3%)
Paradigm (+30.8%)
PTH (+25%)
SecureData (-23.1%)
Sekunjalo (+41.2%)
Smacsoft (-22.7%)
Zaptronix (+33.3%)

Internationally

Applix (-38.4%)
Aris (+41.7%)
Cirrus Logic (-39.3%)
DCS Group (-40.8%)
Elantec Semiconductor (-38.7%)
Enherent (-50%)
Gateway (-42.9%)
Internet.com (-39.4%)
Micron Electronics (-42.2%)
StarMedia Networks (-44.4%)
Vixel (-43.7%)
Western Digital (-38.4%)

Finally, next week will see the last Booth`s Bites for this year. However, a retrospective review of the year 2000 and a brief glance into 2001 will follow later that week.