Cell settlement, Paradigm liquidation take the spotlight

The $400 million settlement by Hewlett-Packard in its dispute with Pitney Bowes and the sell-off to Thomson Multimedia of Alcatel`s DSL business dominated the international world of IT and telecommunications last week.

[VIDEO]At home, the confirmation of the settlement of the dispute between Cell C and Nextcom for a rumoured figure of R80 million, and the liquidation of Paradigm Capital Holdings, stole the local headline space.

• .        we saw satisfactory year-end numbers from Eureka (revenue down but earnings well up);
• .        a full-year (14 months) loss from Y3K (revenue also significantly down);
• .        a profit warning from Unihold; and
• .        the suspension of the shares of Paradigm Capital Holdings, which has also applied for voluntary liquidation.

[Local]

Other local news included:

• .        the creation of a joint venture between Iocore and Southern Focus Holdings; and
• .        the resignations of the chairman and FD of Sempres International and the appointment of Peter Cramer as its new chairman.

• .        we saw the name change of Saja Software to SurveyConnect;
• .        the pay-out of $400 million by HP to Pitney Bowes to settle a printer patent dispute;
• .        the announcement by Nortel Networks that it will delay the spin-off of its optical components unit;
• .        the green light given to L & H to carry out its restructuring plan and sell-off assets; and
• .        the buy-out of Future Network`s Business 2.0 magazine by AOL Time Warner.
• .        Additionally, NEC plans to more than double the number of non-Japanese Asian software engineers over the next two years, to compensate for a national shortage within Japan.

[International]

Other international news included:

• .        the appointments of Charles Hoffman as president and CEO of Covad Comms Group and Steve Francis as president and CEO of ActionPoint;
• .        the resignations of Larry Boucher as chairman of Adaptec and Zhidong Wang, president and CEO of Sina.com; and
• .        job loss announcements from 724 Solutions, Accenture, AXS-One, Caliber Learning Network, Certicom, Elantec Semiconductor, Entrust Technologies, ePresence, Ingram Micro, Juniper Networks, Lucent Technologies, MEMC Electronic Materials, Nokia and Sina.com.

It is in the ISP arena that we are likely to see the most changes in the near future.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

We saw excellent figures from ACD Systems, Comtech Telecomms and Global Web.

Good numbers were recorded by Comverse Technology, Conolog, Telewest Comms and Zonic (back in the black); and satisfactory ones by Telesoft (back in the black) and Wescam.

Mediocre returns came from Carreker, Comino, Dataram, Dycom Industries, eircom and Volt Information Sciences.

Losses were reported by 3Com, Caldera International, Certicom, Crayfish, Danka Business Systems, ePresence, Focus Solutions, Handspring, Knowledge Management Software Plc., Lattice Semiconductor, MCK Comms, Molex, National Semiconductor, Net Nanny Software, NHC Comms, OmniVision Technologies, Procom Technology, ProsoftTraining.com, Stratos Lightwave, Thrunet, TranSwitch, Versus Technology and Wavve Telecomms.

Other financial news included profit warnings from 3Com, Adaptec, ASM International NV, ATMI, Artesyn Technologies, California Micro Devices, Cypress Semiconductor, Elantec Semiconductor, Entrust Technologies, eUniverse, Gemplus, HP, Integrated Silicon Solutions, Juniper Networks, Lattice Semiconductor, Molex, National Semiconductor, Oberthur Card Systems, Open Telecomms, Pericom Semiconductor, Spectrian and Xilinx.

There was also a share split announcement from Leapnet (reverse), as well as a satisfactory IPO from Alliance Data and a withdrawn IPO from IPG Photonics.

Locally

Accord (+33.3%)
Cape Empowerment Trust (-25%)
Casey (-50%)
Core (-50%)
Dectronic (+66.7%)
Metropolis (+288.9%)
Pradatech (-33.3%)
Rectron (-29.2%)
Secure Data (+25%)
Streamworks (+30%)

Internationally

Anacomp (+57.1%)
Borland (+29.5%)
ConMat Technologies (+50%)
Convergent Comms (-41.4%)
Internet America (+34.9%)
Madge (+29.3%)
NSB Retail Systems (-44.5%)
OnSpan Networking (+135.7%)
Verity (+44.8%)
Visual Data (+30.1%)

This week sees the release of full-year figures from M-Cell, but it is in the ISP arena that we are likely to see the most changes in the near future.

The link-up with Affinity by Absa seems to be the start of an emerging pattern in the local market, and I expect other similar partnerships to materialise. We also have the de-listing of M-Web and the re-emergence of Citec following its acquisition from Iocore by Johncom and MTN.