Calm before the storm

The international world of ICT was quiet last week ahead of the flood of quarterly results expected to start this week. There were a handful of acquisitions, including another in the IT services space (Sykes and ICT Group).

At home, the results from a number of locally-based companies, and the change at the top of Internet Solutions, took much of the local ICT media space.

* Satisfactory interim numbers from Adapt IT, with revenue up 60%, although profit only up 5%.
* Mediocre interim figures from Altron, with revenue down 8% and profit down 49%.
* Mixed interim numbers from Datacentrix, with revenue marginally down, but profit marginally up; DTH, with revenue up 33%, but profit down 20%; and SecureData, with revenue up 71%, EBIDTA up 57%, but net income down.
* Beget Holdings is transferring its listing from the VCM sector of the JSE to AltX.
* Derek Wilcocks was named MD of Internet Solutions.
* The resignations of Angus MacRobert, CEO of Internet Solutions; and Michelle Williams, deputy chairman of SITA.

* Amr El Leithy was appointed president for the MEA region of Alcatel-Lucent; and Tiens Lange was named Comztek's business unit manager for Africa, excluding SA.

Look out for a possible additional investment in Telkom SA by Convergence Partners.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Ciena, a network specialist company, acquired most of the optical networking and carrier Ethernet assets of Nortel's Metro Ethernet business, for $521 million.
* Compuware bought Gomez, a company currently owned by Dolphin Equity Partners, for $295 million. Gomez is an application performance management software company.
* Emerson Electric, an industrial equipment maker, purchased Avocent, an IT company, for $1.2 billion. Emerson plans to apply Avocent's software management technology to its network power systems, energy management and precision cooling services.
* IBM acquired the assets of Wiltshire Credit Corporation, a mortgage servicing company.
* Nuance bought eCopy, a company that provides solutions that integrate paper documents into business applications, for $54 million.
* Sykes Enterprises, a BPO company, purchased the ICT Group, a provider of customer management and BPO services, for $263 million. The new company is expected to generate annual revenue of over $1.2 billion.
* Trident Microsystems (US) acquired NXP Semiconductors' television systems and set-top box business units, in a deal that will see the latter having a 60% stake in the former.
* Innolux Display (Taiwan) and TPO Displays (Taiwan) have merged to create a major competitor in the medium-size LCD panel market.
* VimpelCom (Russia) and Kyivstar (Ukraine) have merged to create a new New York-listed entity in which Telenor (Norway) will have a 35.42% shareholding and the Alfa Group (Russia) a 43.89% shareholding. The remaining shares would be used for the listing.
* Juniper Networks is to move its listing from Nasdaq to the NYSE as from 29 October.
* Verizon Business has entered a global strategic alliance with McAfee.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Infosys Technologies.
* A successful IPO by Grameenphone in Bangladesh, a telecommunications operator that was 62% owned by Norway's Telenor.

* International:
* A buyer for Brocade Communications Systems, which has put itself up for sale.
* The buyer for GVT (Brazil), a telecommunications operator, since Telefonica has now made a higher bid than that made by Vivendi a few days ago.
* The outcome of the US Justice Department's investigations into a possible monopolisation of the mainframe market by IBM.
* Africa:
* A possible acquisition of Zamtel (Zambia) by India's MTNL.
* Investments by Convergence Partners, an investment holding and private equity company chaired by Andile Ngcaba, in East Africa-based telecommunications companies.
* South Africa:
* A possible additional investment in Telkom SA by Convergence Partners.

* Global mobile subscriptions are set to reach 4.6 billion by the end of this year, according to the ITU. In addition, mobile broadband users are expected to top 600 million, and the figure is now higher than that for fixed broadband subscriptions.

* JSE All share index: Up 3.5%
* Nasdaq: Up 4.6% (highest weekend close this year)
* Top SA share movements: African Cellular Towers (-11.8%), Datatec (+9.9%), Dimension Data (+14.9%), Faritec (+20%), Labat Africa (+14.3%), Poynting (+11.4%), SecureData (+10.2%), Sekunjalo (-11.4%), Stella Vista (-16.7%) and TCS (-20%)

Forbes magazine recently published its listing of 'The 100 Most Powerful Women'. From a technology perspective, HP had two entries, Oracle had one entry, Xerox had two entries and Yahoo one entry in the top 50.