Investopedia: Oracle Dials It Up In Telecom

Oracle (Nasdaq:ORCL) doesn't do things halfway, and when the company announced its acquisition of Acme Packet (Nasdaq:APKT) it looked like only the beginning of the company's strategy to exploit the large telecom vertical. Now we know that the company really is serious, as it has followed the Acme Packet deal with an announcement that it intends to acquire networking vendor Tekelec from its private equity owners.

A Complimentary Deal With Interesting IP Ramifications
Right off the bat, acquiring Tekelec makes quite a bit of sense. Tekelec is a telecom equipment vendor that specializes in products that handle mobile traffic. In particular, the company focuses on areas like network signaling, policy control, and subscriber data management. Combined with Acme Packet's network control products/technology, Oracle will offer a cohesive hardware/software line-up in network control for large carrier customers like Verizon (NYSE:VZ) and AT&T (NYSE:T).

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Seeking Alpha: BroadSoft Broadsides Investors

Growth stocks have a relationship with Wall Street not unlike that between mobsters and their "clients" - namely, "give us the growth … or else." Unfortunately for BroadSoft (BSFT) investors, the company had little choice but to go with "or else" with its guidance for 2013. As revenue growth appears to be flattening, the biggest question now is whether it's a pause or the warning sign that the BroadSoft growth story isn't what investors thought it was. While I'm inclined to believe that this is a pause and not a stop, investors need to appreciate the above-average risk and volatility in this name.

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BroadSoft Broadsides Investors

Investopedia: Oracle Adds Some Surprising Hardware Assets In Acme Packet

Oracle (Nasdaq:ORCL) has given investors ample reminders that the company intends to be an active acquirer for the foreseeable future. Likewise, management has made no secret of its intention to expand its hardware assets and its desire to add product/industry verticals to its model. Oracle achieved all of the above with Monday's surprising announcement that the company will acquire session border controller specialist Acme Packet (Nasdaq:APKT) in an all-cash deal.

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Investopedia: Should Investors Play On The Acme Packet See-Saw?

Tech investors and analysts can be fickle creatures - they'll happily project astonishing revenue growth and breathtaking forward multiples when times are good, but they'll turn quickly when growth lags and often over-correct to the downside. None of this is to say that Acme Packet (Nasdaq:APKT) is automatically undervalued, but it may be worth asking whether circumstances have changed so much in the past half-year that the stock should only be worth half of what analysts once said it was worth.

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Investopedia: Adtran And Its Peers Are Back To "Show Me" Status

I'll often get emails from readers that ask me "if you think this stock is cheap, why don't you own it?" Adtran (Nasdaq:ADTN) is a great example of why I often wait to pull the trigger - while I do like the company's management and I think there's potential for the business to grow, no single boat can fight the tide and I'd rather wait to see signs of stabilization (or recovery) in the carrier spending market before stepping up with my own money.

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Investopedia: Acme Packet Another Company Waiting On The Carrier Revival

There's a long list of companies out there where investors are hoping that carriers finally get back to spending this year, a list that includes Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU), Adtran (Nasdaq:ADTN), Juniper (NYSE:JNPR) and Acme Packet (Nasdaq:APKT). While Acme Packet enjoys good share in the session border controller market (SBC) and ought to benefit from adoption and migration to Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and IMS, bears argue that competitors and alternative technologies will steal much of that potential.

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Seeking Alpha: Alcatel-Lucent: Still Building On Loose Sand

Waiting for a true, sustained recovery in carrier spending is starting to feel like waiting for Godot. Although there have been a few bright spots this quarter, Juniper (JNPR) and Ericsson (ERIC), even those are "yeah, but..." stories. With Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) it's even worse, as the company is falling short not only in sales, but may also be losing hard-won margin leverage.

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Alcatel-Lucent: Still Building On Loose Sand

Investopedia: Adtran Looks Cheap ... But Is It Safe?

Using a 36-year old movie reference to introduce a tech stock ("Is it safe?" from "Marathon Man") may not be the best approach, but it's a worthwhile question to ask with Adtran (Nasdaq:ADTN). Adtran is an unusually high-quality company with solid share and good growth potential in "last mile access," but the company is critically dependent on carrier spending and that makes the timing of any recovery much harder to forecast.

First Quarter Results Bad ... As Expected
Adtran made it pretty clear a month ago that carrier spending wasn't rebounding sharply in the first quarter, as the company preannounced a very disappointing quarter. Revenue fell 23% sequentially (and 19% from the prior year) and came in almost one-quarter below original expectations.

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Seeking Alpha : Should Investors Add Adtran After Fourth Quarter Earnings?

Such is the state of business for companies that supply equipment to carriers like Verizon (VZ) like AT&T (T) that not missing numbers is greeted with the enthusiasm usually reserved for beat-and-raise stories. Certainly these are challenging times for last-mile equipment vendor Adtran (ADTN), but increased home and business demand for broadband and ongoing wireless backhaul buildout could spell better times ahead.

Q4 Results - Good Enough Will Do
Adtran's results weren't great, but the performance at other carrier equipment vendors like Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) and Acme Packet (APKT) wouldn't give any reason to expect them to be so. Nevertheless, a sequential revenue drop of 9% (and a 6% gain from last year) was good enough to meet expectations.

Adtran saw year-on-year growth in both broadband access (up 49%) and internetworking (up 37%), but sequential comparisons were not so exciting (down almost 15% and up about 2%, respectively). Optical access was outright bad, though, as sales dropped 17% from last year and 25% from the third quarter.

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Should Investors Add Adtran After Fourth Quarter Earnings?

Investopedia: Service Providers Disconnect Juniper's Momentum

While tech stocks often trade in tandem when there's news from the major players, not all networking is the same. In other words, the problems that Juniper Networks (NYSE:JNPR) is now facing are not necessarily directly translatable to Cisco Systems (Nasdaq:CSCO) or smaller vendors like F5 Networks (Nasdaq:FFIV) and Riverbed Technology (Nasdaq:RVBD). For Juniper, as for Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU) and Acme Packet (Nasdaq:APKT), the story today is about weak spending in North America from the large service providers. (For more, see Earning Forecasts: A Primer.)

A Disappointing End to the Year  
Juniper announced January 9, 2012, that fourth quarter results were not going to meet Wall Street expectations. Instead of the average estimates of $1.19 billion in revenue and 34 cents in earnings, Juniper announced that results were going to be on the order of $1.11 billion to $1.12 billion and 26 cents to 28 cents.

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Investopedia: Guidance Sours High-Flying Aruba

Even though the actual numbers do not support it, it feels like the markets have been down at least 1% every day for weeks. Whether this is just another example of enough people buying into "Sell in May and go away" that it becomes self-fulfilling or not, the reality is that the market is in a shoot-first mood. 

When Aruba Networks (Nasdaq:ARUN) gave cautious guidance with its fiscal third-quarter report, it was tantamount to painting a bullseye on the derrière of shareholders and the market punished the stock in due course. With the dust starting to settle a bit, though, it is time to ask whether the long-term growth potential of this name merits the attention of risk-tolerant growth investors.


On its Own, Not a Bad Fiscal Third Quarter
In a vacuum with respect to guidance and expectations, Aruba's third quarter was pretty strong in many respects. Revenue rose 53% and surpassed estimates by more than the usual degree. Growth was again led by product revenue (up 58%), though 3% sequential growth in the U.S. is a bit of a concern - particularly in light of that softer guidance.


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