Waves of change at MGX

The international world of IT and telecommunications was quiet last week thanks to the US Thanksgiving holiday, but at home the events at MGX stole much of the local ICT headline space.

* we saw full-year losses from Stella Vista (revenue also well down), Trematon and Vesta technology Holdings (revenue also well down);

* excellent interims from MTN Group (revenue well up and attributable earnings significantly up);

* good mid-year numbers from Sekunjalo Investments (revenue up and back in the black);

* mediocre half-year figures from Edutech (revenue down but back in the black);

* interim losses from Casey (although revenue slightly up), Johnnic Comms (but revenue up) and Real Africa Holdings; and

* profit warnings from Faritec and MGX.

[Local]

Other local news included:

* Black Business Quarterly named Telkom SA CEO Sizwe Nxasana as Black Businessman of the Year;

* Andre Wills resigned as MD of BMI-TechKnowledge;

* Phumlani Moholi was appointed as divisional MD of Grintek Telecom;

* Africa-based Venture Comms opened a South African office; and

* the host of activities at MGX that included the appointment of Peter Flack as chairman and interim CEO in order to head-up a strategic review of the operations, the departure on an extended leave of absence by Chris Hills, CEO of MGX, and the resignation of Aletha Ling, an executive director.

* Cable & Wireless announced that chairman designate, David Nash, won`t take up his new position at the start of the new year;

* the news that the IPO for Sri Lanka Telecom was oversubscribed; and

* the Australian government`s announcement that it would delay the full sale of Telstra until 2004-2005.

Black Business Quarterly named Telkom SA CEO Sizwe Nxasana as Black Businessman of the Year.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

Additionally, look out for the fate of the Czech government`s stake in Cesky Telekom.

[International]

Other international news included:

* the appointment of Gerhard Eick as deputy CEO of Deutsche Telekom AG;

* the resignation of Dale Walker as president and COO of Digital Insight;

* the retirement of Erwin Koenigs, chairman and CEO of Software AG; and

* job loss announcements from Amdocs, Broadcom, Sanmina-SCI and Sopheon.

We saw excellent* figures from Forgent Networks (back in the black).

Good numbers* were recorded by Detica Group, Methode Electronics and Verint (back in the black); and satisfactory* ones by Comarco, RoboGroup (back in the black), SemTech, Speedware and VTech.

Mediocre* returns came from Dycom (but back in the black), LanVision Systems and Sunair Electronics; while very poor results* were posted by Formula Systems (but back in the black) and QAD (but back in the black).

Losses* came from Arel, Comverse, Credence, DataMirror, Descartes Systems Group, Eckoh Technologies, En Pointe Technologies, Gruppo Formula SpA, HPL Technologies, Intelliplus Group, Kingston Comms, Leitch Technology, Meta4 NV, MobilCom AG, Nuvo, Optio Software, OTE, OTI, Plasmon, RM, SeaChange International, Seagull, Telework Systems, Trintech Group, Ubizen NV and Versatile Mobile Systems.

Other financial news included share buy-back announcements from Matsushita Electric and Peak International; profit warnings from Jenoptik, Saba Software, SemTech, Tech Data and TriQuint Semiconductor; and a share split announcement from Comdial (reverse). Additionally, Genuity is to file for Chapter 11 as part of the buy-out bid from Level 3 Comms and Enterasys has restated its 2001 results.

Locally

Edutech (-75%)

Elexir (+50%)

Faritec (+22.5%)

Idion (+20%)

Maxtec (-54.5%)

Pinnacle (+37.5%)

Prism (-23.5%)

Sekunjalo (+65.2%)

Spescom (-11.9%)

Sethold (-16.1%)

Internationally

CMG (+75.6%)

CTC Comms Group (+50%)

DDi (+57.1%)

Digex (+143.2%)

Getronics (+50%)

NTELOS (+47.1%)

PSC (+50%)

Sipex (+49.1%)

UnitedGlobalCom (+48.6%)

VerticalNet (+83.8%)

At this year`s Technology Top 100 awards, the ICT Design and Development award went to SA Microelectronic Systems (SAMES) and the ICT Software, Services and Solutions award went to Net1 Applied Technology Holdings (Aplitec).

* NB

Guidelines for the categorisation of results are as follows and are always in comparison with the equivalent period for the previous year; pro forma numbers are ignored.

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

* Good: Both revenue and net income growth is 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.