Buying and selling

The Dell/Lexmark tie-up and the continuing sell-off by telecoms companies of their non-core assets dominated the international world of IT and telecommunications last week.

Qwest is to re-state its financial figures and delete $950 million of 'improperly` booked revenue from its 2000 and 2001 accounts.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

At home, the approval by the shareholders of the liquidation/buy-out of MB Technologies, Bytes Technology Group`s UK acquisition and the sell-off of Paracon`s shareholding in Mercury Interactive stole much of the local ICT headline space during an extremely quiet week.

• we saw a full-year loss from Integrear (but revenue slightly up); and
• profit warnings from CCI Holdings and Datatec.

[Local]

Other local news included:

• Jasco`s change of JSE sector, from IT hardware - telecoms equipment to E&E equipment - electronic equipment;
• the appointments of Magda Engelbrecht as country manager of Mercury Interactive SA, Mark Lilje as MD of RangeGate, and Stefano Mattiello as MD of Sun Microsystems for the sub-Saharan region;
• the resignation of Andrew Fosbrook as CEO of RangeGate; and
• the cancellation of the Pulse consumer exhibition.

• we saw Gemplus demand the resignations of two of its directors, following an alleged breach of their fiduciary duties;
• Dell chose Lexmark for a deal to produce its own badged range of printers;
• the sell-off by Alcatel of its 6.1% stake in Thales SA;
• the sell-off by Verizon Comms of the majority of its 21.5% stake in Telecom New Zealand; and
• the announcement that Toshiba and Matsushita are to merge their CRT units.

Additionally, look out for the possible filing of criminal charges against Xerox executives following the significant re-statement of its earnings earlier this year; developments at EDS following rumours regarding its ongoing liquidity; and the possible merger of Mitsubishi DRAM chip operations with Elpida, the NEC/Hitachi joint venture.

[International]

Other international news included:

• the appointments of Eric Abersur as CEO of Freeserve, Randy Eisenbach as COO of Corel, Keith Nguyen as president and COO of Datalogic, and Yutaka Ueda as president and CEO of Norsat;
• the resignation of Richard Bergmann, president of Manugistics; and
• job loss announcements from Andrew, Axcelis, Cable & Wireless, CDT, ClearOne Comms, Colt Telecom, Ditech Comms, GoAmerica, Handspring, HP, Manugistics, MobilCom AG, SBC Comms and Varian Semiconductor.

We saw good numbers posted by Cognos and satisfactory results from CODASciSys and Wallace.

Mediocre returns came from CDT (but back in the black), Concurrent Technologies, ICM Computer Group and Trace Group.

Losses were posted by Aehr Test Systems, Amstrad, Ault, Centennial Comms, Corel, Covista Comms, Emblaze Systems, International DisplayWorks, iMagicTV, Intraware, Jaco Electronics, Lawson Software, Liberate Technologies, Manugistics, Micron Technology, Motion Media, Myratech.net, NetBenefit, NHC Comms, Palm, Parity, Precision Optics and Solectron.

Other financial news included share buy-back announcements from Adobe, Bisys, Black Box, Integral Systems and SBS Technologies; and profit warnings from AOL Latin America, ATMI, Brocade, ClearOne Comms, Colt Telecom, Dassault Systems, Ditech Comms, Glenayre, JDS Uniphase, Nortel Networks, NTT DoCoMo, Orange SA, Polycom, Pomeroy Computer Resources, Redback Networks, SonicWALL and Sonus Networks.

There were also share split announcements from Nortel Networks; a rights issue announcement from Tower Semiconductor; a withdrawn IPO by BellSouth for its Latin American business; and a planned listing in London this week by CRM services firm Customer Services.

Additionally, Peregrine Systems has filed for a voluntary petition to reorganise under Chapter 11 protection and is also the subject of a US Justice Department probe into its accounting practices.

Qwest is to re-state its financial figures and delete $950 million of 'improperly` booked revenue from its 2000 and 2001 accounts.

Locally

Aqua Online (+16.7%)
AST (+9.8%)
Crux (+100%)
Idion (+9.1%)
Paracon (+15.4%)
Prism (+33.3%)
Sekunjalo (-9.1%)
Sethold (+19%)
ShawCell (-16.7%)

Internationally

Amkor (+55.4%)
Applix (+35.9%)
Extreme Networks (-39.4%)
Focal Comms (-44.4%)
Network Computer DVC (-66.7%)
Nortel Networks (-40.8%)
NTELOS (-51.1%)
Peregrine System (-69.1%)
Redback Networks (-44.1%)
Sipex (-44.8%)

InformationWeek has published its InformationWeek 500, a prestigious listing of the largest and most innovative users of IT. In terms of ICT companies, the highest placed organisations were 3Com at 10, Snap-on at 21, Equifax at 22, Software Spectrum at 28 and BellSouth at 30.