| j_r_ewing - Dienstag, 4. September 2001 - 23:47 |
| Hier dürfte einer DER Wachstumsmärkte der nächsten Jahre liegen : http://www.ftmarketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid={6E8528DC-5AFF-403D-91D8-B3C93642A97A} Europe Tech Report Researchers say optical parts market is about to take off By Madeleine Acey, FTMarketWatch 3:35:00 PM BST Aug 20, 2001 LONDON (FTMW) - Bookham [UK:BHM] [US:BKHM] shareholders who decided to stay in for the long-term should be breathing at least a little sigh of relief on Monday as market researchers announced the company's market is about to take-off. CIR (Communications Industry Researchers) said demand for small, cheap components for building or upgrading certain types of telecoms network is kicking in - particularly metropolitan area networks. See previous column on promise from metro networks http://www.ftmarketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid={6E8528DC-5AFF-403D-91D8-B3C93642A97A} The market for integrated optical components - where several functions are put on one chip - is worth just $13.4 million this year, CIR said. But by 2005 it will reach $2.6 billion. This is just the kind of news companies like Bookham, Alcatel Optronics [FR:013015] and JDS Uniphase [US:JDSU] have been waiting for. Britain's Bookham, in particular, specialises in combining several components on single chips. Larger telecoms equipment makers including Nortel [US:NT] use Bookham to provide such parts for their systems. But all these companies have been in the wars as telecoms spending has been squeezed after the bottom fell out of the dotcom market - meaning fewer than expected business users of Internet services - and as many telcos spent billions on third generation mobile phone licences. One unwelcome point from CIR, for Bookham followers, was the claim that the industry was abandoning the "pure but hard-to-achieve" idea of packing lots of complicated components on to one massive chip and was instead looking at bonding single function chips together in one package. But Bookham's manufacturing experience and its high-yield production processes, based on the cheaper techniques of the silicon chip industry, should be major plusses. CIR pointed out that "...manufacturing yields for integrated optical components are extremely low," and "... the unit cost of producing integrated optical components is quite high. CIR predicts that achieving better yields will become a key way to gain a competitive advantage.... Significant yield improvements come only from lengthy manufacturing experience." CIR said transmitters and transceivers would be the components to take the largest slice of the pie - $1.6 billion. It mentioned Lucent's [US:LU] Agere [US:AGRA] as being the most promising player in this area. But none of the companies would see significant revenue from integrated components until 2003, CIR concluded. Bookham shares were down 1.8 percent at 165 pence in a slightly negative London tech market on Monday. Madeleine Acey writes on technology for FTMarketWatch in London |
| j_r_ewing - Mittwoch, 5. September 2001 - 00:23 |
| (dies soll technische Tendenzen beleuchten - keinesfalls gegen Uniphase gehen! :) http://yahoo.smartmoney.com/techmarket/index.cfm?Story=20010725 Tech Market Has JDS Uniphase Still Got Game? [über die Miniaturisierung, Integration, Verbilligung, und neue Firmen] By Tiernan Ray July 25, 2001 IF YOU WERE the tallest player on a basketball team, used to rushing the net, swooping in with your awesome wingspan, and shouldering aside smaller opponents, you wouldn't be happy if the rules of the game were suddenly changed in favor of the defense. Station a tall center under the net, as the National Basketball Association's new zone-defense rules would allow, and it's suddenly a lot less fun being, say, Shaquille O'Neal, a classic power-offense player. Businesses can find themselves on the wrong side of the game, too, and sometimes a troublesome economy can lend a hand. Think of Hughes, which at the end of the 1950s dominated the global market for transistors. As recession gripped the U.S. economy in 1960, a steady shift took place toward something called the integrated circuit, which grouped many transistors together on a silicon wafer. The "IC" eclipsed the transistor business in a few short years, and by the mid-'60s Hughes was merely ninth-ranked in integrated circuits. The steady rise of Intel (INTC) in subsequent years meant Hughes and its peers — General Electric (GE), RCA, etc. — would never again enjoy the dominant role in chips they once played in transistors. (It's all delightfully recounted in Ernest Braun's and Stuart Macdonald's classic, "Revolution in Miniature," now sadly out of print.) Like RCA and other giant industrial companies, JDS Uniphase (JDSU) has long reigned supreme over the most innovative technology of our day, namely fiber-optic components. Given its dominance of that market, JDS has been called the Intel of fiber. On Thursday, JDS will announce results for the fiscal fourth quarter, and they're expected to be down sharply from prior quarters, thanks in part to a glut of components that have pounded prices down by as much as 35%, by some analysts' count. And yet the most serious issue for JDS may be buried amid the temporary gloom. The rules of the fiber-optic-component business are changing, and the results could create problems for the current leaders, including JDS. Two weeks ago I walked the floor at the annual National Fiber Optics Engineer's Conference in Baltimore. There was less partying than when I covered the conference last year, but attendance and the exhibitor count were both up from last year, and there were some intelligent, not panicked, reflections on where fiber optics needs to go in a time of tightening budgets. One of the main conclusions is that the kinds of powerful products JDS has built a business on may not be the order of the day. To date, the fiber-optics market has been dominated by an astounding array of devices designed for high performance and reliability. They include so-called optical amplifiers, which consist of strands of fiber doped with various chemicals and bombarded by laser light to heighten the strength of optical signals. There are also various gratings crafted from the fiber itself that serve to diffract light in ways that make possible dense wavelength division multiplexing, or DWDM, a dominant communications format in today's fiber-optic network. To supply the exploding Internet market and the accompanying bandwidth craze of the last few years, JDS focused on products for the most demanding sorts of fiber-optic applications. It steadily acquired competitors such as Fitel and SDL to gain high-power laser diodes that could amplify signals over long distances, and gratings with superior diffraction properties. The company increasingly pushed the speed of fiber-optic transceivers in recent years, to match the demand from Ciena (CIEN) and others for systems that could transmit 10 billion bits a second or more of data. As the laying of fiber crisscrossing the U.S. slows, and as Qwest Communications (Q), WorldCom (WCOM) and others pull in their horns, many argue that markets are shifting. Now, the last mile to the user in metropolitan markets has become the focus, and getting bandwidth to businesses has become key. This market is less performance-sensitive than the high-speed, long-distance routes that JDS and its partners have supplied, and is driven more by demand for compact size and low cost. As a result, what's needed now, say observers, is not power, but integration. Fiber optics has classically been built around prisms, lenses, strands of fiber — things very different from computer chips. Each of these parts must then be wrapped in its own individual case and then connected to other parts and to a circuit board. This approach is known in the business as packaging, and experts estimate that it accounts for as much as 70% of the cost of fiber-optic components. But smaller companies have recently been finding ways to assemble many individual parts with less cost than traditional packaging, a process known as "hybrid integration." At NFOEC, a start-up called Micro Photonix Integration of Phoenix, which makes "modulators," the devices used to turn the laser light on and off to make signals, was showing off a product that combined the modulator and circuitry needed to control it in a single small casing. Usually, the parts have to be assembled separately by customers, which adds cost. MPI aims in the future to integrate the laser into the same device, producing further savings. Other companies at NFOEC were talking about more radical approaches. In something called "wafer-scale" integration, many separate parts are manufactured together on the same silicon wafer. Telephotonics, a start-up in Wilmington, Mass., was talking up a single chip containing multiple "attenuators," which throttle back the power of a laser diode. Intended specifically for the constraints of metropolitan markets, the attenuator chip is a quarter of the cost of assembling multiple individual arrays, its inventors claim. What's important about wafer-scale manufacturing is that it looks a lot more like standard computer-chip manufacturing, where more and more parts are increasingly crammed together and cut as a piece. That has been a Holy Grail for the optical industry for some time. Some investors at NFOEC went away convinced this kind of integration may lie in the future. "We've been focused on performance above all in recent years," says Jeffrey Yu, an investor with venture-capital firm Crescendo Ventures in Palo Alto, Calif., and a speaker at the conference. "Performance will still be very important for the foreseeable future, but as the metro market becomes the focus, priority must shift to cheaper devices and higher levels of integration." To be sure, JDS has many fine products coming down the pipeline. In particular, the fruits of the SDL acquisition, completed in February, are starting to appear. They include high-power "Raman" optical amplifiers, which will be important as the industry moves to transmitting 40 billion bits (40 gbps) of data per second and shifts to more complex DWDM systems. JDS is turning out parts that operate with a fraction of the power consumption usually required to amplify such systems. And the company is one of the main candidates, along with Corning (GLW), to develop the high-speed modulators needed for the 40-gbps world. The question is whether JDS has what it takes to jump on the integration bandwagon, if indeed that's where the business is headed, and to set aside its emphasis on power. Certainly the company hasn't been asleep: Last year it acquired 177,000 square feet of manufacturing space in North Carolina, where it plans to crank out microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS, chips, a form of computer chip in which many working parts can be fashioned as a single semiconductor. What's more, the SDL acquisition clearly helps prepare JDS for the shift to integration. Because SDL has sold mostly laser diodes, which are computer chips of a sort, and so-called waveguides, a silicon-based device, its manufacturing facilities in Santa Clara, Calif., and in the United Kingdom are oriented around high-volume chip manufacture. And SDL has demonstrated some interesting, if limited, kinds of integration in a few of the products it's cranked out in the last year. John Lively, director for optical components with research firm RHK in South San Francisco, says that work conducted by JDS at its New Jersey facilities, where the company is developing chips from the exotic semiconductor material indium phosphide, also fits nicely with the integration trend. He also says JDS can still look forward to healthy growth for its more traditional products in Europe and Asia, markets that didn't overspend on high-performance optical gear the way the U.S. did. Still, the leap to cheaper, smaller parts is a big step away from the current business. "This is definitely the big challenge ahead for them," says Joseph Wolf, who follows the stock for UBS Warburg. "I would give the benefit of the doubt, though, to JDS, Corning and Nortel Networks (NT), the companies that have shipped hundreds of billions of dollars in parts in the last several years," says Wolf, rather than the start-ups, which in some cases haven't sold any chips yet. I wouldn't necessarily bet against JDS, either. It's probably a good long-term bet that when the market picks up and budgets loosen, spending on the kinds of high-performance, highly reliable products JDS develops will move forward again. A year-and-a-half is the time horizon for that, and a year-and-a-half goes by quickly. But the similarities between wafer-scale integration and what happened to the transistor business 40 years ago are startling. Is optics on the verge of a makeover? We'll just have to see. If it is, I expect JDS will be able to make the transition, given its tremendous research and development and deep customer relationships. But the rules of its game are clearly changing. |
| j_r_ewing - Mittwoch, 5. September 2001 - 00:28 |
| (...hier weiterer Einblick in Technologien und Firmen, wenn der Artikel auch nicht mehr taufrisch ist :) Tech Market The Optical Train Rolls On By Tiernan Ray November 24, 2000 STOP ME IF you've heard the one about the swami who wanted to build the world's tallest building in Dallas. The 1,659-foot tower proposed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi — yes, the very one who counseled the Beatles 30-some years ago — would house 50,000 office workers, condo residents and hotel guests, and would no doubt serve as a magnificent sundial as its pyramidal silhouette rises from what is now cow pasture. Certainly the past decade of phenomenal economic growth has led to some mind-boggling excesses, the result of too much money in too many uncareful hands. The stock market has unloaded some this year, starting with the acres of fruitless online arcades such as eToys (ETYS) and Buy.com (BUYX). Some say an equally dismal fate awaits another "concept" stock sector, the optical-networking field. In three months, the domain of sophisticated computer-networking equipment built of glass fiber and tiny mirrors has gone from a fund manager's sure thing to a disaster. One day in August, Nortel Networks (NT) is telling the market it will invest several billion dollars in new optical-manufacturing capacity to meet unbridled demand; two months later, it's coming up with the-dog-ate-my-homework reasons why it can't sell enough fiber optics to meet expectations. The wheels come off at Lucent Technologies (LU) for a second and third time and WorldCom (WCOM) stuns us by saying it can't make money running phone lines. It all confirms for many that pushing an optical-communications switch — the bread-and-butter at Sycamore Networks (SCMR) and Corvis (CORV) — just has to be "tech's last great bubble," as James Surowiecki casually dubbed the sector in a recent issue of The New Yorker. There's little at present to support the argument that fiber optics is now a "value play." Year-to-date, the fall of Sycamore (44%), Corvis (67%) and others has scared all but the most rabid investors for the foreseeable future. I think the sell-off is all very shortsighted, though. I don't much care that fund managers who were lapping up optical networking in August won't go near it these days. They'll be back, mainly because the history of fiber optics is a grand one, and it continues to shape the very destiny of public-communications networks. However, the only way to understand the investment premise is to understand what's actually happening to those networks. So what is this optics stuff? I've spent the past few weeks making the optical-networking "circuit," and seen much. The circuit has gotten bigger because, far from being a local mirage rising from the sands of Silicon Valley, optical-networking technology is spreading fast from one lab bench to another around the world. From the exclusive confines of San Jose, Calif., and the suburbs of Boston, the innovations have spread to small towns like Newark, N.J., and Dublin, Calif.; to university centers such as Research Triangle Park in North Carolina; to Monmouth County in New Jersey and around Princeton University, and down to Glen Burnie and Columbia in Maryland. Optical has spread the wealth to unlikely tech corners, such as Northville, Mich., where Nanovation Technologies, a maker of cutting-edge optical circuits, is headquartered; and centers of optical excellence in Scotland, Belgium, Quebec, Ottawa, Sweden and many other points. We're entering what many are calling the third generation, or 3G, of fiber optics, a development that may actually offer new revenue opportunities to the telco's. First was the primordial dawn. In the 1970s, researchers like Jim Hsieh made it practical to transmit light in glass fibers over long distances. Paul Lazay developed the very first fibers for undersea transmission. (Today, Hsieh's got a new firm, Nova Crystals, in San Jose, that sells cutting-edge laser chips; and Lazay runs IronBridge Networks, a privately held firm developing Internet routers that transmit data at trillions of bits per second.) Seeing the Light Here are some companies to watch as optical networking begins to spread across the Internet. Company Location Business Nanovation Technologies Northville, Mich. optical-switching components Nova Crystals San Jose, Calif. VCSEL lasers for telecom equipment Corvis Columbia, Md. optical amplifiers, switches Sycamore Networks Chelmsford, Mass. DWDM switching and transmission ONI Systems San Jose, Calif. metropolitan optical equipment IronBridge Networks Lexington, Mass. terrabit-speed routers Iris Labs Plano, Texas optical-enabling technologies Metera Networks Richardson, Texas optical-networking equipment Latus Lightworks Richardson, Texas long-haul optical-transport gear Iolon San Jose, Calif. tunable-wavelength lasers Then Ciena burst on the scene in 1997 with the first so-called dense wavelength division multiplexing, or DWDM, equipment. DWDM multiplies bandwidth by sending data simultaneously over many colors of light, using multiple lasers and combining the beams with a prism. Sycamore and ONI Systems (ONIS) have followed with second-generation products that cram lots of phone lines and data traffic onto each wavelength. Both first and second generation help to cut costs: DWDM saves on the amount of new fiber being built, and boxes like Sycamore's allow carriers to save equipment costs to transmit data over those DWDM channels. As one analyst remarked to me not so long ago, technologies like DWDM create essentially "free bandwidth." With 3G optical networking, the emphasis shifts from cost cutting to creating new revenue. It helps to think about how phone companies struggle to sell bandwidth in order to understand what's going on. In the late 1960s, phone companies invented what's called the "T" system, the main representative of which is the well-known "T-1 line." If you're lucky enough to have one of these, you've got a connection to the Internet of 1.5 million bits per second. When fiber was first widely deployed, in the mid-1980s, carriers used T-1 as the main product for large businesses that wanted high-bandwidth networking. T-1, in other words, became a unit of commerce. The phone companies now buying all the fiber-optic gear need a new unit of commerce they can sell for a new age, if they are to monetize all that DWDM and switching equipment. That new unit of commerce will likely be the individual wavelengths of light created inside DWDM systems. I recently made a pilgrimage down to Dallas, to a research conference called Opticomm — in the suburb of Plano, not far from where the Maharishi would break ground — with the intent of understanding this third generation of optics. Plano, famous mainly for J.C. Penney (JCP) and Frito Lay, is also being transformed by fiber optics: The population has nearly doubled in the past decade as telecom firms such as Lucent, Nortel and divisions of Fujitsu and Alcatel (ALA) have set up operations. Now optical firms are flocking. H. Michael Zadikian, the entrepreneur who sold Texas firm Monterey Networks to Cisco Systems (CSCO) in 1999 for a cool $500 million in stock, has launched not one but three new optical firms in the area, Iris Labs, Metera Networks and Latus Lightworks. There was plenty of talk at Opticomm about the continuing efforts to create more bandwidth. One development is the tunable laser, which lets a single optical transceiver perform at any wavelength that's needed in a DWDM system. That makes it cheaper for system vendors like Sycamore to build DWDM systems. It's an odd state of affairs, almost as if the microprocessor were just being invented even as the first personal computers were rolling off the lines. One company to watch is privately backed Iolon, a tunable-laser firm. Back to the Drawing Board Conrad Leifur, a Wall Street analyst who covers JDS Uniphase (JDSU) and Avanex (AVNX) for Piper Jaffray, predicted that next year everyone will be talking about networking equipment that can transmit data at 40 billion bits per second, instead of 10 billion bits per second, which is the high end for most networks today. However, "40 gigabits has a marketing angle that's bigger than its bandwidth importance," said Leifur. That's because what's happening in 3G to change the Internet is far more important than the speed offered by fast, tunable lasers. It's no exaggeration to say that the shift to 3G may well change the entire way the Internet works. The way data move around the Internet today is rather like the "traveling salesman" problem from high school or college math courses: The weary peddler must pass through each town on his route only once in order to complete the sales trip most efficiently. Similarly, data on the Internet wends its way to your desktop through a statistical process that seeks to optimize the number of stops. That statistical process is computed second-by-second on the Internet inside large "routers" sold by Juniper Networks (JNPR) and Cisco, among others. 3G is all about a new kind of software that doesn't merely fling data across the Web, but rather pays attention to the conditions of the roads at each point. Called MPLS, the software wouldn't only compute the statistics of each stop (the "salesman" approach), but would also have information about each and every wavelength of light in a WDM system. MPLS can route each color belonging to a customer to its destination based on which fiber cables are most full at the moment, or based on which cities are reporting broken fiber conduits thanks to backhoes. By allowing phone companies to manage each color of light, MPLS transforms WDM from a speed technology into a system of commerce. Individual colors of light could be priced and sold to each customer, creating a new revenue engine to replace the aging T-1 while giving the Internet a whole new structure. There were a lot of hoary academic presentations at Opticomm on how Internet routing will change under MPLS, but the technology is far from tweedy: A week later I attended the Next Generation Networks conference in Washington, D.C. Less a research forum than a trade conference, most NGNers wear golf shirts with company logos and laugh too loud at industry jokes about fiber optics. I put the question of MPLS to Dr. John McQuillan, the sage-like impresario whose mild, contemplative manner and brushy beard lend him the air of a country doctor. "MPLS is very real and I'm astounded by the progress it's making," says McQuillan, noting that over 200 Internet switches were running the MPLS software live on at least 20 networks around the world. Sounds Like Redmond With a kind of groundswell for MPLS, the question now may be who will ultimately control the stuff. While it's tempting to think optical upstarts like Corvis will be running the pipes, the Net's existing stalwarts are not giving up. Scott Kriens, chairman, president and CEO of Juniper, gave a talk at NGN alluding to "natural boundaries." It was a lively refresh of the lecture Microsoft (MSFT) has given the software industry for years, the message being, "stay out of our way, or else." However, if the MPLS saga plays out, Juniper's routers will have competition from a host of other, fascinating devices. Researchers are figuring out how to build the optical equivalent of Juniper's routers, something they call "photonic packet routers." A recent Boston conference, Photonics East, hosted a whole day of scholarly presentations on building these devices. IP networks, like the Internet, send data in small chunks, called packets. Routers, like the kind made by Juniper, know all about packets, which helps them decipher MPLS. But routers are based on electronics, not photonics: they must first convert the wavelengths inside DWDM into electrons before they can switch the channels of communication. That slows down the transmission. Today's optical switches can't read packets of data. I've mentioned recently (see "The Amazing Technicolor Light Show") that Nortel and others are building switches based on tiny mirrors that rotate to deliver the light. Tiny mirrors may become as emblematic of the Naughts as disco balls a generation ago. For they allow DWDM gear to direct light irrespective of its speed, which is very helpful for making telco equipment simpler to use. Mirror, Mirror... But mirrors don't know anything about the data inside the stream of light. And even if they did, they move too slowly to switch those packets. Mirrors are built using a mechanical technology known as MEMS, which can only rotate the beam of light once every thousandth of a second or so. At speeds of 10 billion bits per second and higher, which is now the standard for big telecom networks, packets of data arrive at a router every 40 billionths of a second — far too fast for MEMS, in other words. One of the most intriguing academic presentations at Opticomm was given by Dr. Ben Yoo, from the University of California at Davis, who is working on photonic packet routers using what are called "wavelength converters." These devices can switch each packet of data by changing its color to a new wavelength every billionth of a second, or nanosecond. "Basically, we're building an all-optical router," he remarked in his talk. Yoo says the resulting optical router can scale to about 1,000 times the largest electronic router and the speed could be 1,000 times faster. That would result in 1,000 trillion bits, or one "petabit" per second switching, something unthinkable for electronic routers relying on repeated signal conversion between optics and electronics. The secret is Yoo's design for wavelength converters fabricated in a standard semiconductor material that has no moving parts like MEMS. Firms such as SmartMoney pick Vitesse Semiconductor (VTSS) already know how to fashion such high-speed semiconductor materials in high volume at commercial prices. Yoo's all-optical router research is in two phases, the first utilizing off-the-shelf commercial components, and the second utilizing advanced wavelength converters. Skeptics will argue that the present sorry state of the telecom market doesn't bode well for mirrors or any other expensive 3G technologies. Participants at Opticomm made a valiant pitch for the sustainability of the market, however. Rob Coneybeer, a venture capitalist with New Enterprise Associates, a West Coast firm, poo-pooed lingering concerns about young phone companies suddenly cash poor. "CLECs [competitive local exchange carriers] represent less than 15% of annual U.S. capital expenditure," he stated. "The available capital expenditure at large, young phone companies is tremendous given the cash on their balance sheets." Yes, the Qwests (Q) of the world may indeed rush to the rescue. But I think the only way to understand this market for the long haul is to appreciate that technologies such as DWDM and MPLS, far from being an extravagant expense, may be a way out of the darkness for phone companies craving new revenue. For optical investors, now is a time to just believe. Take my word for it. |
| stephan - Freitag, 4. Januar 2002 - 19:44 |
| News zu Corning, die habe ich seit letzen Jahr im Privatdepot. Bisher bescheidene Kursgewinne. Immerhin scheinen sie sich langsam durch das inventory gearbeitet zuhaben - sie lassen die Maschinen wieder laufen: Corning nimmt Produktion in Fabriken wieder auf Corning, der weltweit führende Anbieter von Glasfaserkabeln, hat heute die Wiederaufnahme der Produktion in zwei amerikanischen Fabriken angekündigt. Dort stellt Corning Glasfasern her, die als optisches Medium zur Durchleitung von Lasersignalen genutzt werden. Ein Sprecher des Unternehmens betonte allerdings, dass die Wiederaufnahme der Produktion nicht als ein Zeichen gewertet werden kann, dass es jetzt bald wieder mit der Nachfrage aufwärts gehen werde. Vielmehr hat das Unternehmen seit Oktober seine Lagerbestände signifikant abgebaut und durch den Arbeitsstopp Kosten eingespart. Corning erwartet erst für Ende des Jahres eine spürbare Besserung der Nachfrage. Bis dahin geht das Unternehmen von einer Stagnation der Nachfrage auf dem augenblicklichen Niveau aus. Weitere Entlassungen schließt Corning nicht aus. Anfang 2001 hatte der Glasfaserspezialist 43.000 Arbeitnehmer in den eigenen Reihen. Anfang 2002 sind es nach ersten Schätzungen etwa 12.000 weniger. Der Aktienkurs von Corning leidet etwas unter den Aussagen und verliert 2,5 Prozent auf 9,46 Dollar. |
| j_r_ewing - Montag, 19. Januar 2004 - 16:05 |
| Macht voice-over-IP eigentlich wirklich Sinn? (Hintergrund: Avaya, Spectralink) Man hört immer öfter, daß TK-Provider davon reden, als Zielrichtung (Umlegung des Telefonverkehrs). Nun ist doch das Internet / IP aber gerade durch seinen PAKET-Charakter gekennzeichnet: der Inhalt wird aufgeteilt in Pakete, die unabhängig von einander im Netz flitzen - oder eben hängenbleiben. Dann würde die Wiedergabe eines Sprachinhalts eben an der Stelle, wo ein Paket auf sich warten läßt, stocken. Oder beginnt die Wiedergabe erst, wenn alle Pakete eingetroffen sind? Außerdem: Ein Netz muß so und so bezahlt werden. Oder liegt der Reiz darin, seinen Reibach mal wieder über staatlich finanzierte Infrastruktur einzufahren? (Forschungsnetze - so fing ja auch das Internet mal an (vom Militär abgesehen), und heute werden ja eine neue Generation Hochgeschwindigkeitsnetze für die Forschung aufgebaut.) Gruß JR ---------------------------------------------- http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/tol-16.01.04-000/ Juniper mit Umsatzwachstum Der weltweit zweitgrößte Netzwerkausrüster Juniper Networks konnte seinen Umsatz im vierten Quartal steigern. Das US-Unternehmen meldet einen Umsatz von 207 Millionen US- Dollar nach 155,3 Millionen im Vorjahreszeitraum. Den Überschuss bezifferte der Konzern mit 14,7 Millionen (vier Cent pro Aktie) -- im vierten Quartal des Vorjahres waren es 8,5 Millionen Dollar (zwei Cent pro Aktie). Damit hat Juniper nun fünf Quartale hintereinander Umsatzsteigerungen erzielt und die eigenen Prognosen wie die der Branchenbeobachter übertroffen. Für das laufende erste Quartal rechnet das Unternehmen mit einem Umsatz von 210 Millionen bis 215 Millionen Dollar. (tol/c't) --------------------- Juniper Networks (JNPR) $28.48 +5.55: After the close Thursday, Juniper published Q4 EPS of $0.04 on revenue of $206.955MM (+33.3% Y/Y) vs. Reuters Research consensus at $0.05 on $182.71MM. The reported $0.04 includes a loss of $15.193MM on retirement of convertible securities. Guided for Q1 non-GAAP EPS of $0.08 on revenue of $210-215MM vs. Reuters Research consensus at $0.05 on $186.72MM. Performance Revenue Revenue grew 33.3% Y/Y to $206.955MM. Product revenue grew 33.8% Y/Y to $179.104MM (87% of sales). Service revenue grew 29.9% Y/Y to $27.851MM (13% of sales). Gross Margin Gross profit increased 47.9% Y/Y to $136.326MM. Gross margin improved 650 bps Y/Y to 65.9%. Product gross profit jumped 47.5% Y/Y to $124.351MM (91% of total gross profit). Gross margin improved 640 bps Y/Y to 69.4%. Service gross profit jumped 52.2% Y/Y to $11.975MM (9% of total gross profit). Gross margin improved 630 bps Y/Y to 43.0%. Company is likely to realize additional economies of scale as volume ramps, driven by the recovery in carrier capital spending. Operating Margin Operating income increased 590.0% Y/Y to $40.081MM. Operating margin improved 1570 bps Y/Y to 19.4%. Sales and marketing expense rose 24.7% Y/Y to $44.380MM, and as a percent of sales improved by 150 bps to 21.4%. General and administrative expense increased 10.3% Y/Y to $7.170MM, and as a percent of sales improved by 70 bps to 3.5%. R&D edged up 0.9% Y/Y to $44.695MM, and as a percent of sales declined by 690 bps to 21.6%. Operating margin expansion possible as revenue continues to grow at a faster pace than expense and R&D. Valuation On an inverted DCF/EVA basis, assuming firm balance sheet management and steady Y/Y improvement to: 26-28% operating margin by C05, JNPR's valuation implies that the company must grow revenue in the high 40% range for the eight years beginning in C05 in order for investors to justify owning shares at current valuation. 31-33% operating margin by C06, JNPR's valuation implies that the company must grow revenue in the low 40% range for the eight years beginning in C06 in order for investors to justify owning shares at current valuation. 36-38% operating margin by C06, JNPR's valuation implies that the company must grow revenue by 40% each year for the eight years beginning in C06 in order for investors to justify owning shares at current valuation. Consensus Y/Y growth for C04 and C05 is 13.5% and 22.8% respectively. On a price multiples basis, Juniper trades at 13.9x Reuters Research consensus C04E revenue of $795.87MM (+13.5% Y/Y) and 11.3x C05E revenue of $977.42MM (+22.8% Y/Y), and 118.7x C04E EPS of $0.24 and 81.4x C05E EPS of $0.35. Summary JNPR shares are likely to trend higher from current level as the company is viewed on a growth track, but shares are highly volatile and we would wait for a pull-back before initiating a new position. We noted on the Q3 preview and review (Story Stocks, Oct 9-10, 2003) that if the Avaya (AV 16.12 +0.31) ads are any indication, interest for unified communications, VoIP and converged network solutions is picking up, which should help feed the market for Juniper products; that Juniper will need to achieve growth in excess of 30% over the long-term in order for shareholders to be rewarded. The company delivered 30%+ Y/Y growth in Q4, and shares are trading higher, up 24% today and over 50% since our October 10 review. The budding recovery in carrier capital spending coupled with strong government spending supports strong demand for routers. Additionally, the transition to a converged (data and voice) network is still in its infancy and gaining momentum, and increases demand for Juniper's edge and core products. In this context, Juniper has the opportunity to deliver strong double digit growth at least over the next year to two years. However, the timing of the pickup in capital spending remains uncertain, and at current level, Juniper will need to deliver sustained top-line growth in the 40% range and operating margin in the high 20% range in order for investors to justify owning shares. As well, JNPR shares are highly volatile; last night, shares were up $2.20 in after hours trading when we posted management guidance on In Play; shares were up over $3.00 10 minutes after our post, and are now up over $5.50 or 24%. As a result, despite the strong revenue growth and margin expansion opportunities ahead, we would wait for a 20-25% pull-back before initiating a position. For investors who bought shares based on our Q3 review, we would take this opportunity to protect some of the gains. Juniper is a beneficiary of the migration to converged networks. The strength seen in JNPR's Q4 results suggests the market for telecom equipment at the carrier and on the enterprise level is stabilizing / beginning to expand. Legacy players with broad product portfolios that encompass voice-over-IP, such as Avaya (AV 16.12 +0.31), and enterprise vendors, such as Spectralink (SLNK 22.20 -0.21), make for attractive plays on convergence and the mobile office. Both companies are attractively priced on a relative basis and we would continue to accumulate positions.--Ping Yu, Briefing.com |
| kleinje - Dienstag, 20. Januar 2004 - 15:49 |
| Hallo j r! Voice over IP funktioniert nach meinen Informationen etwas anders. Telefonie und Daten laufen auch jetzt schon über die selben Netze. Die Netzkapazitäten werden aber mit verschiedenen Prioritäten verkauft. Wenn es also irgendwo "eng" wird, dann werden bei gewöhnlichen Internetsurfern wie uns einfach ein paar Packete verschluckt, weil die Internetserviceprovider Geld sparen und Kapazitäten mit niedriger Priorität kaufen. Für Telefondienste wird Kapazität mit höherer Priorität gekauft und die kommt dann noch durch. Das geht so weit, dass die Netzbetreiber Mathematiker ausknobeln lassen( daher weiss ich das auch), mit welchen Prioritäten sie jeweils am besten ihre Netzkapazitäten verkaufen, damit sie bei kurzfristigen Anfragen noch flexibel genug sind, Aufträge mit hoher Priorität anzunehmen. Die bringen nämlich viel mehr ein und dann werden halt einfach ein paar Leitungen mit niedriger Priorität blockiert, um noch irgendwie den lukrativen Auftrag annehmen zu können. Für Telefonleitungen wird sogar ein ganzer Kanal reserviert. D. h. es wird ein Kanal von Punkt A zu Punkt B durchgeschaltet und erst, wenn der gesichert ist, bekommst Du Dein Freizeichen. Du musst Dir also keine Sorgen machen, dass Deine Telefongespräche mittendrin unterbrochen werden... Tschüs, kleinje |
| stw - Dienstag, 20. Januar 2004 - 18:19 |
| @kleinje:Sehr interessant. Vielen Dank für die anschauliche Nachhilfe... :-) stw |
| j_r_ewing - Mittwoch, 21. Januar 2004 - 17:42 |
| ...ebenfalls danke, kleinje ! Nun trieb mich weniger die Angst um eine Unterbrechung meiner eigenen Gespräche um, als daß ich mir einen Reim darauf zu machen versuche, warum sich alle Telekomms auf das Voice-over-IP stürzen: ob das Sinn macht, und was darin wohl an Chancen sitzt. Und ich muß gestehen, da tappe ich immer noch völlig im dunkeln. Daß es über andere Netze läuft, ist demnach nicht der Punkt. Wenn es den Übergang bei Telefonverbindungen zum Paketverkehr, also die Aufgabe von Festverbindungen bedeutet: wie kann das unterbrechungsfrei funktionieren ?? Wenn die Idee die ist, daß es unterhalb des Festverbindungsbereichs, im Paketbereich mit relativ hoher Priorität noch eine Kapazitäts-Spanne gibt, wo die Festverbindung zwar nicht garantiert ist, aber faktisch immer noch möglich (obwohl das aus wirtschaftlichen Gründen eigentlich ausoptimiert sein sollte); und man nun zur Kosteneinsparug DIESEN mieten will statt Festverbindungen - das mag ja für einen (kleinen) Nachfrager möglich sein; keinesfalls aber, wenn sich ALLE drauf stürzen ! Oder ist es so, daß man zwischen Festverbindungsbereich und normalem Paketbereich noch eine neue (Paket-)Zone anlegt, in der "Schläuche" verkauft werden, die für Gesamtheiten gestückelter Gespräche genutzt werden, wobei man z.B. die Gesprächspausen, also "leere" Pakete, erst gar nicht sendet, und so Kosten einspart (eine Art Komprimierung), andererseits aber den "Schlauch" "dick" genug kauft, daß sichergestellt ist, daß von den Paketen alle verzugsfrei durchkommen ? Aber: wenn MIR das jetzt spontan einfällt, dürfte das in der Branche ja wohl schon ein alter Hut sein. (Ist das nicht die Idee von GPRM?) Wenn man Telefonverbindungen aber nach wie vor als Festleitung verkauft: wo ändert sich dann imt Voice-over-IP überhaupt was ?? Machst du mich / uns da bitte noch schlau ? Gruß JR |
| kleinje - Donnerstag, 22. Januar 2004 - 11:04 |
| Hallo! Ich dachte mir schon, dass Du Dich nicht darum sorgst, dass Deine Gespräche unterbrochen werden. Aber ich wollte sicher gehen ;-) Okay, ich hab mich jetzt noch mal ein bißchen schlau gemacht. Das VoIP von dem Du gesprochen hast ist das denke ich die nächste Generation von VoIP. Ich habe das gemeint, was aktuell schon gemacht wird, also die Konvergenz von Daten- und Sprachleitungen. Beim VoIP der nächsten Generation ist tatsächlich geplant, die Sprache als Datenpakete zu verschicken. Das ist allerdings noch nicht ganz unproblematisch. Hier ein Link dazu: http://news.com.com/2100-1037_3-1024883.html?tag=guts_bi_7352 Ich denke, dass das schon realisierbar ist, aber wie in dem Link auch angeführt, wird man Kapazitäten mit hoher Priorität mieten müssen, um eine ordentliche Qualität gewährleisten zu können, und damit lässt sich dann nicht mehr viel sparen. Ich denke, dass es da zur Zeit nur deswegen so einen Hype gibt, da in der Interneteuphorie viele ISPs ihre Netze stark ausgebaut haben und nun auf Überkapazitäten sitzen. Dadurch lassen sich zur Zeit noch relativ billig Kapazitäten mit hoher Priorität bekommen. Wenn die Netze aber irgendwann wieder stärker ausgelastet sind, weil keiner mehr was in den Ausbau steckt, wird VoIP aber wieder an Attraktivität verlieren, denke ich. Tschüs, kleinje |
| chinaman - Mittwoch, 28. April 2004 - 16:57 |
| 28.04.2004 16:39 Nortel versinkt im Bilanzschlamassel Ein neuer Bilanzskandal erschüttert das kanadische Netzwerk-Unternehmen Nortel: bei der Bilanz für 2003 wurde getrickst. Daraufhin feuerte Nortel seine Führungsriege. Die Anleger waren entsetzt, die Aktie bricht ein. Das Ergebnis für das vergangene Jahr wurde deutlich zu hoch ausgewiesen und muss nun rund um die Hälfte nach unten korrigiert werden. Die für morgen geplante Präsentation der Jahreszahlen wurde erneut verschoben. Bereits am 30. März hätte Nortel die Bilanz vorlegen müssen. Nun läuft Nortel die Zeit davon: die Frist für die Vorlage der Zahlen läuft nur noch bis Ende Juni. Nortel hatte für 2003 die Rückkehr in die Gewinnzone verkündet. Aktie stürzt ab Der Aktienkurs rauschte im frühen Handel an der New Yorker Börse um fast 30 Prozent nach unten. Ähnlich stark brach der Titel an der kanadischen Börse in Toronto ein. Chef muss gehen Nach der Aufdeckung des Bilanz-Lochs reagierte Nortel umgehend: Konzernchef Frank Dunn wurde ebenso gefeuert wie Finanzchef Douglas Beatty und Kontroller Michael Gollogly. Die beiden letzteren waren bereits im März beurlaubt worden. Neuer Nortel-Chef soll William Owens werden. Er ist erst seit 2002 bei Nortel und damit offenbar "sauber". Neben seinem Vorgänger waren auch der Finanzchef und der oberste Controller des Konzerns geschasst worden, sie wurden bereits bei den ersten Hinweisen auf Fälschungen im März ausgetauscht. Bereits im November 2003 hatte es Bilanzunregelmäßigkeiten bei Nortel gegeben. Die Kanadier mussten eingestehen, dass die Umsätze in den Bilanzen seit 2000 falsch berechnet worden waren. Im März schockte Nortel die Anleger mit der Ankündigung einer erneuten Bilanz-Korrektur. Börsenaufsicht ermittelt Seitdem ermittelt die US-Börsenaufsicht SEC gegen Nortel und leitete eine formelle Untersuchung ein. Die SEC verlangt eine unabhängige Überprüfung der Nortel-Bilanzen für die Jahre 2000 bis 2002 sowie das erste Halbjahr 2003. Der kanadische Netzwerk-Hersteller befindet sich in der Dauer-Krise. 2001 erlitt das Unternehmen einen Rekordverlust von 27,3 Milliarden Dollar. Nortel traf es besonders hart, dass die Telekomkonzerne wegen hoher Schulden kaum noch Geld in den Ausbau ihrer Netzwerkinfrastruktur steckten. Im Rahmen eines harten Sanierungsprogramms strichen die Kanadier rund 60.000 Arbeitsplätze. Ericsson macht es Nortel vor Die größten Konkurrenten von Nortel, Lucent und Ericsson, haben die Krise scheinbar besser überwunden als Nortel. Der schwedische Ericsson-Konzern schreibt inzwischen tiefschwarze Zahlen. |