Last week: Arivia.kom/AST takeover speculation

It was a very quiet week internationally with no dominant stories.

Government is to go ahead with the sale of its 5% stake in MTN.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

At home, the Venfin results, EOH`s acquisition of Atos KPMG and the speculation re the arivia.kom/AST takeover dominated the local ICT headline space.

* we saw excellent year-end numbers from Psitek (headline earnings figures only available);

* good full-year figures from Compu-Clearing (revenue and earnings both up) and Venfin (compared with previous 15 months, revenue marginally down but profits more than doubled);

* satisfactory year-end figures from Digicore (revenue down but earnings well up);

* mediocre year-end numbers from Inala and Tracker (headline earnings numbers only available for both companies);

* a full-year loss from Intervid (but revenue significantly up); and

* a half-year loss from UK-listed ITouch (although revenues nearly double).

Other local news included:

* the appointment of Kim Reid as CEO of M-Web;

* the resignation of Andrew Milne, CEO of M-Web;

* the re-emergence of PeopleSoft SA following PeopleSoft`s acquisition of JD Edwards; and

* the announcement that government is to go ahead with the sale of its 5% stake in MTN.

New local distributorships included that of Celestix by Agilitech Africa, CIP products by Harvey Jones Systems and Intellect by Leaf Wireless.

* United Microelectronics will sell-off a 5% stake in Taiwanese chip design house, Novatek; and

* Dow Corning established a new business, Dow Corning Compound Semiconductor Solutions.

Other international news included:

* the appointments of Len Lauer as president and COO of Sprint, Isabel Maxwell as CEO of iCognito, and Vincent Oddo as president and CEO of Access Integrated Networks;

* the resignations of Steve Maine as CEO of Kingston Comms and Sanjay Mittal as CEO of Selectica; and

* job loss announcements from 3Com, Ciber, Gateway and Tellabs.

We saw very good* numbers from SurfControl (back in the black), Ulticom (back in the black) and Verint Systems.

Good figures* were recorded by Adobe, Gtech, Netgear, SigmaTron, Solution 6 Holdings, Staffware and Verity; and satisfactory* ones by China Telecom, LanVision, Manatron, Oracle and Tikit.

Mediocre* returns came from Atos Origin, Bouygues, Carreker, Geac Computer and Plaut AG; while very poor results* came from SteelCloud.

Losses* were posted by Centennial Comms, Comverse Technology, Diversinet, Elecsys, I-Link, QSC AG, Remec, SkillSoft, TippingPoint Technologies, TransNet, Versant and WPCS International.

Other financial news included analyst upgrades for Covad Comms, Credence, Cypress Semiconductor, Fairchild Semiconductor, IBM, Lucent Technologies, Palm and Retek; analyst downgrades for Activision, Applied Micro Circuits, Concurrent Computer, Micron Technology, Pitney Bowes, PMC-Sierra and Terayon Comms; a share buy-back announcement from National Semiconductor; and results/profit warnings (often veiled) from Atos Origin, Ciber, Cisco, Diagonal, PEC Solutions, Proxim and TippingPoint Technologies.

There were also IPO filings from NPTest, the former Schlumberger test unit, and Synnex Information Technologies; and a planned listing in October on the LSE by Wolfson Microelectronics that will be the largest technology IPO on the LSE since April 2001. Additionally, NTELOS has now emerged from Chapter 11.

Locally

AdvTech (+9.3%)
AST (-35%)
Cycad (+25%)
Dimension Data (-12.9%)
EOH (+9.5%)
Grintek (+15%)
I-Solutions (+140%)
Pinnacle (+38.9%)
Square One (-14.3%)
Zaptronix (+33.3%)

Internationally

Allegiance Telecomms (+88.5%)
Covad Comms (+48.9%)
Daisytek (+36.4%)
Enherent (+90%)
Exabyte (+182.8%)
Internet America (+34.3%)
Knowledge Technology (+41.5%)
RadView Software (+34.1%)
Read-Rite (+33.3%)
Redback Networks (+63.6%)

In terms of indices, Nasdaq was down 0.2% and the JSE was down 1.3% for the week.

I am in New York this week and therefore my next column will only appear on 29 September, but will cover the two-week period.

* NB

Guidelines for the categorisation of results are as follows. The figures are always in comparison with the equivalent period for the previous year; pro forma numbers are ignored (the terminology may vary slightly from country to country).

* Excellent: Both revenue and net income growth are in excess of 50%.

* Good: Both revenue and net income growth are in excess of 10%.

* Satisfactory: Revenue is within 10% of previous year and net income is up.

* Mediocre: Either revenue and/or net income is down.

* Very poor: Net income is less than 1% of revenue.

* Loss: A loss has been recorded.