Quiet week sees flurry of local results

In a very quiet period, the heavy quarterly loss by Novell, the acquisition of Exodus Comms by Cable & Wireless and the news from the European Commission to delay its decisions on the Microsoft anti-trust case dominated the international world of IT and telecommunications last week. At home, the flurry of local results stole most of the local headline space.

• we saw satisfactory year-end numbers from Stella Vista (revenue well up but margins heavily squeezed);
• full-year losses from Elexir (but revenue well up), Sekunjalo Investments (revenue also down) and Vesta Technology (revenue also well down);
• good interims from Vodacom (revenue up and headline earnings well up, bottom line change not available);
• mixed half-year numbers from Cape Empowerment Trust (no revenue but earnings only slightly down);
• satisfactory half-year figures from Eureka Industrial (revenue down but earnings well up) and Johnnic Comms (back in the black on Pro Forma basis);
• very poor half-year figures from Y2Ktec;
• interim losses from Casey (revenue also well down), Edutech (revenue also well down), M-Web, Venfin and Y3K (although revenue well up); and
• profit warnings from Datacentrix (Commerce Centre) and Grintek (unofficial).

[Local]

Other local news included:

• the termination by Datacentrix subsidiary, Commerce Centre, of its largest project;
• the awarding to Net1 Applied Technology of the MTN, Business Day Technology Top 100 trophy; and
• the news that Uniterm has joined the Tarantella Technology Alliance Group.

• we saw the announcement from Toshiba that it is pulling the plug on its desktop line in the US;
• the news that the European Commission is only likely to conclude its Microsoft anti-trust investigation next year; and
• the reorganisation of EMC into two new operating units.

[VIDEO]Additionally, look out for the XO Comms, after having been thrown a final lifeline.

[International]

Other international news included:

• the appointments of Gerhard Burtscher as CEO of SuSE Linux, Jason DeZwire as chairman of API Electronics, D Bradly Olah as CEO of Active IQ Technologies and Daniel Scharre as president and CEO of Larscom; and
• job loss announcements from Alcatel, Broadwing Technology, Business Systems Group Holdings, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Highway Optical, Hitachi, IBM, Network Access Solutions, Palm, Philips Electronics NV and Sagent Technology.

Excellent figures were reported by Netgateway. Good numbers were recorded by New Tel, Telekom Malaysia Bhd and VimpelCom (back in the black); and satisfactory ones by Advanced Systems (back in the black), Microsemi and Telekom Austria AG (back in the black).

Mediocre returns came from Comarco, Methode Electronics and Tech Data; whil very poor results were posted by ARI Network Services (but back in the black), Emcore (but back in the black) and Global Payment Technologies.

Losses came from 360networks, ACD Systems, ADC Telecomms, ASAT Holdings, Brocade Comms Systems, Business Systems Group Holdings, Cedara Software, Certicom, Clarity Commerce Solutions, Comino, Credence Systems, DataMirror, Deutsche Telekom, eOn Comms, Fast Search & Transfer ASA, Kingston Comms, Leitch Technology, Mitek Systems, MKS, Myrient, NetSilicon, Novell, OmniVision, Plaintree Systems, PrimaCom AG, Prosoft Training, AD, QSC AG, SeaChange International, Sunair Electronics, T-Online, The Innovation Group and Trintech Group.

This is the last column for 2001 with the exception of my yearly wrap-up and predictions for 2002 that will be published next week.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

Other financial news included a share buy-back announcement from Cognigen Networks; and profit warnings from Alcatel, Altera, Broadwing Technology, Nokia, Novellus, Palm and Texas Instruments.

Locally

AST Group (-13.5%)
Cape Empowerment Trust (-20%)
DNA Supply Chain (-13%)
EC-Hold (-15%)
Edutech (+114.3%)
Grintek (-11.1%)
Ixchange (+43%)
Sekunjalo (+20%)
Y2Ktec (-25%)
Y3K (+50%)

Internationally

Affinity Internet Holdings (+92.6%)
Anacomp (+150%)
Arch Wireless (-41.3%)
Cedar Group (-40.4%)
IT Group (-40.2%)
Network Technology (+50%)
NTL (-43.6%)
Red Hat (+36.6%)
Robocom Systems (-41.7%)
Security First Technologies (+39.3%)

In June, Business Week published its Info Tech 100. It`s interesting to note that only Nvidia survives as one of the top 10 (still at number four), with number one Celestica down at 62, number two Verizon Comms at 24 and number three Scientific-Atlanta at 94. The new number one is Cerner, followed by CDW Computer Centers and Tech Data.

This is the last column for 2001 with the exception of my yearly wrap-up and predictions for 2002 that will be published next week. Booth`s Bites will be back on 14 January with a column that will cover the holiday period.