Telkom cleans up

A flood of quarterly numbers washed over the international ICT world last week. At home, Telkom SA purchased the remaining 25% of the shares it doesn't already own of Nigeria-based Multi-Links Telecommunications, and SecureData suspended COO and director, Brett Parker.

* Tiso Telecom, part of the Tiso Group, a BEE investment company, made a R116 million (25.1%) investment in African Cellular Towers.
* Two SAP Business One providers, Lorge Business One and Britton Solutions, merged.
* SecureData has suspended COO and director, Brett Parker, and appointed Tony Nutter as acting MD of SecureData Africa.

* Satisfactory year-end figures from Maroc Telecom, part of the Vivendi Group.
* Telkom SA made a $130 million (25%) investment in Multi-Links Telecommunications (Nigeria), making its ownership 100%.
* Sam Mensah was appointed Intel Capital's director for SA and Sub-Saharan Africa. Intel Capital is Intel's global investment organisation.

A Florida-based maker of mainframes is filing an anti-trust complaint against IBM in Europe, alleging the latter has refused to sell its software to run on the company's equipment.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* UK-based Autonomy, a software search company, bought US-based Interwoven, a company engaged in the design, development and marketing of content management software solutions. The deal was worth $775 million. Autonomy has annual revenue of over $500 million and Interwoven over $250 million. Autonomy has a presence in SA and works with channel architects, a VAR and system integrator.
* Qualcomm purchased AMD's handheld semiconductor business for $65 million.
* Sybase acquired paybox Solutions, a developer of mobile payment solutions.
* VeriSign, an Internet infrastructure company, purchased Certicom, a maker of digital encryption technology, for $73 million. A few days ago, Research In Motion (BlackBerry) withdrew its bid for Certicom after a Canadian court blocked the deal.
* Microsoft has sold off its small strategic investment (7.26% stake) in Comcast, a cable TV operator.
* A Florida-based maker of mainframes is filing an anti-trust complaint against IBM in Europe, alleging the latter has refused to sell its software to run on the company's equipment.
* Very good quarterly figures from Autonomy (profit up over 85%) and Bharti Airtel (India).
* Good quarterly numbers from Bahrain Telecom.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Apple and Wipro.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Amdocs, Idea Cellular (India), Logitech (profit down 70%), Microsoft, Nokia (profit down nearly 70%), Saudi Telecom (profit down 62%), TSMC (revenue down 31% and profit down 64%).
* Mixed quarterly figures from Google (revenue up 19%, but profit down 68%), IBM (revenue down, but profit up 12%) and Telefon AB LM Ericsson (revenue up 23%, but profit down 31%).
* Very poor quarterly figures from Xerox (revenue down 10% and profit at only $1 million, down over 99%).
* Quarterly losses from AMD (revenue also down over 40%), AU Optronics, Imation (revenue also down), LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics and Seagate Technology (revenue also down over 30%).
* Craig Barrett, chairman of Intel, retired, with effect from May, while Jane Shaw was appointed non-executive chairman.

* JSE All share index: Down 6.9%
* Nasdaq: Down 3.4%
* Top SA share movements: African Cellular Towers (+11.1%), Altron (-11.2%), Ansys (-12.5%), Digicore (-12.4%), GijimaAst (-17.2%) and Poynting Antennas (-52.3%).

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