Liste Newsletter

Index Performances
EPITEX, index Epita, Nov. 5, 2003: 87.48 Combined share value in EPITEX: $566.26 (EPITEX set at 100 on Aug. 31, 2001)

News

MARKET FOCUS

U.S. equities were little changed on Wednesday, as investors awaited the employment report for October and financial results from Cisco Systems.

The ISM services sector index rose to 64.7 in October from 63.3 in September, confirming the surge in ISM manufacturing activity reported on Monday. Both gauges are well above the reading of 50 that signals a sector expansion.

But concern remained about the jobs market after the outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas said layoff announcements more than doubled in October to a one-year-high of 171,874.

Cisco Systems was in focus ahead of reporting its quarterly financial numbers after the close. The consensus anticipates earnings of 15 cents a share on $4.86-billino sales.

Meanwhile, Network Appliance remained well bid on news it is buying Spinnaker Networks for $300 million in stock.

OUTLOOK

Cisco Systems should please after beating the Street with profits of $1.1 billion or 15 cents a share on revenue of $5.1 billion. Excluding one-time items, Cisco earned 17 cents.

The main market-mover comes out on Friday, with payrolls expected to have added 40,000 jobs in October following a gain of 57,000 in September. The jobless rate is seen unchanged at 6.1 percent.

THE NUMBERS

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gave up 18 points, or 0.2 percent, to 9,820. The Nasdaq Composite Index added 1 point to 1,959, while the Nasdaq-100 index of large-capitalization tech and biotech stocks ended flat at 1,429.

Profile

Cisco Systems reported revenues of $5.1 billion, up 5.3 percent year over year, and earnings of 15 cents a share or 17 cents on a pro forma basis.

The leader in networking for the Internet said net sales for the first quarter of fiscal 2004 were $5.1 billion, compared with $4.8 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2003, an increase of 5.3 percent, and compared with $4.7 billion for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2003, an increase of 8.5 percent.

“We’ve begun our fiscal year with a solid quarter of continued operational excellence and year-over-year growth,” said John Chambers, president and CEO, Cisco Systems. “We saw strength across our core switching and routing businesses, as well as traction in our advanced technologies. The service provider and public sector segments in particular, continue to be solid markets for our products.”

In the past quarter, Cisco announced deployments of its high-end routing products, including the Cisco 12000 and 7000 series routers, by Verizon Communications, China Netcom Group, U's Communications Corp. in Japan, and Australia's Hutchinson and Telstra.

Cisco introduced an Internet Protocol (IP) telephone, the Cisco IP Phone 7970G, with a high-resolution, color touch screen.

Cisco saw several deployments of its wireless local area network (WLAN) technology to provide hot-spot access. It also launched Cisco CallManager Express, a Cisco IOS Software-based product providing call-processing services, and Cisco Unity Express, a voice-mail and automated-attendant offering for IP telephony.

C&M Communications Co., one of the largest cable operators in Korea, plans to deploy Cisco ONS 15454 10G ML Series cards and Cisco Catalyst family switches to support multimedia services such as Internet access, digital video broadcasting and video on demand.