More Pain for NT

unbelievable !!! its shameful to see this. cannot understand how the board is sitting quietly or for that matter employees taking this crap.

Cisco $112 billion
Nokia $63.62 billion
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Juniper $9.76 billion
Alcatel $6.37 billion
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Foundry $2.51 billion
F5 $1.77 billion
JDSU $1.4 billion
Tellabs $1.4 billion
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Nortel $830 million
Ciena $730 million
Extreme $229 millon

Tekelec $845 million

Tekelec is bigger than Nortel. I'm sure Frank Plastina has a few "I told you so's" for the Nortel BoD.

Frank had his share of screwups before Tekelec.

Such as?

Proxim, which nearly went bankrupt when Frank P ran it and he was kicked out.

77.9 on 42 stocks

On a technical basis, there is absolutely no support on the stock once it broke the all-time low of $4.30 which is one of the reasons why the stock has dropped so rapidly to $1.67. The stock is searching for a bottom and could easily go to $1 or below from here. If the stock does go below $1 for a sustained period of time, Nortel could get delisted from the NYSE and also get hit with credit rating downgrades which would make it even more difficult to borrow money for its payroll and day-to-day operations.

There is going to be a lot more pain ahead. Is bankruptcy looming?

http://financial-cents.blogspot.com/2008/10/why...

Nortel could get delisted from the NYSE and also get hit with credit rating downgrades which would make it even more difficult to borrow money for its payroll and day-to-day operations.

There is going to be a lot more pain ahead. Is bankruptcy looming?

====
re
about credit rating
I think NT is at the very bottom paying 11% rates!
Can NT go lower than that?
I don't think so.
In My Opinion
We will see the end of that tunnel in few weeks!
New orders are not coming /the big deals/
I have not seen anything significant in years!
The 40G deals put customers in an awkward position as NT is looking to sell MEN.
From the customer point of view it's a disaster!
If Nortel would be serious about new battle to survive, the first thing customers would like to see is Mike Z taking the blame for current disaster and resigning.
Not only he is an idiot but also nobody can understand what he says!
How anyone hold him responsible for anything he says?
How long he tried to fool investors_customers into believing that Nortel's business will grow seengle deegyt this year?
It was a Lie!
Send me a fat check for that advice!

Mark, an interesting survey to run would be to ask Nortel investors what their average cost per share is, post reverse split:
$1 to $2
$2 to $5
$5 to $10
$10 to $20
$20 to $50
$50 to $100
> $100

Note I have 1920 shares at an average of about $13; over an 85% loss on paper, so I'm not going to sell. I might even by more at this level.

took my losses and got out. I stopped investing 2001. sold everything off around $7 this year. it hurt a lot then but now looks to be a good decision.

in poker you call that a tilt. its hopeless just cover your losses and get out. most of nortel investors say they won't sell because they've already lost 85% or 90% or whatever, but get out while you have the 15%. if history proves anything, nortel isn't going to make the turnaround and the share prices aren't going back up. you seem to have bought more and more shares as nt kept sliding. if you're thinking of putting more money into your mess, you might as well just give me the money, then at least i'll put it to a better use

Stock is at all time lows and still no insiders purchases up to now. That tells it all I guest !

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=NT

what is the return????? come on you put the money into RIM and even a one day fluctuation can go up by an equivalent of 1 nortel share. so thats like a 100% return if that same money had bought nortel.

no point risking anymore money in this co. its a penny stock pre 10:1 split and will get there post 10:1 split. then what when the stocks booted out of the exchange. your stock is useless.

Mark,

Given the wide net your blog (and research) casts on Nortel, you should hunt down an institutional Wall Street or Bay Street investor or mutual fund manager continues to own NT shares. Interview him about why he continues to be an investor in spite of a perpetual RSS stream of bad news.

Stock watching clearly matters to the $900m+ worth of investors who haven't sold out. Yet.

"Piling On" concept also applies, because it is simple, it stirs emotion and there is no requirement at all for any actual thought for doing so."

Huh? What do you mean by. "no requirement at all for any actual thought for doing so."?
If my physical or mental state reacted unnanounced, I would seek help.

...and never mind reassuring mark or selling us who his "most noteable posters love" because you are not one of mine and I would bet my bottom dollar he is objective enough to make up his own mind so don't try selling him either, "Don't Worry about it Mark" imposing he is worried about a darn thing... I look for words like "trust me" or "in all honesty" that subliminally surface in the reduntant contrarian. =)

I wish I could even ask , and your point was?

Did anyone mention anything about 16 cents presplit yet today?

In football there is the term "Piling On". Why not jump on someone defenceless as it is simple to do. In today's media and blog world about Nortel, the "Piling On" concept also applies, because it is simple, it stirs emotion and there is no requirement at all for any actual thought for doing so.

Don't worry about it Mark, your most notable posters love this as it allows them to have little thought and continue the "Piling On" as they celebrate daily the decline of Nortel as they wish for it's ultimate destruction.

T.I.C. do something positive for a change otherwise expect getting hammered. respect is not by charity but earned.

most people wish a decline because they would want someone smart to take what nortel has, re-einforce the brightest and actually make it successful. we have all seen cheap talking ceos, cabinets, presidents etc. come and go with absolutely no change in nortels situation since 2001.

who can have faith now?

...while true thinkers and feelers hear the plaintive wail of a balalaika player strumming "Kumbaya" wafting on the surly breeze of global warrning.

Btw....has anyone bought into this?
http://www.christianity.ca/NetCommunity/Page.as...

The Citizen also indicated this was rumor stemming from some one inside Nortel at the time.

Gary was surprised no one from Nortel came forward to dismissed this rumor. He went public to denounce it himself, taking the high road alleviating bashing Nortel yet the article indicated he was not optimistic.


The media was too polite not to state this might be far fetched viscous slander to his abrupt departure.

Later reports indicted a "difference in management styles" sounding as ambiguous as "for cause" or "not too distant future" or "more colorful", etc., I find Nortellese entertaining. =)

Gary also left during a time so many abandoned this ship in droves.

I do not know of anyone else's back they spit on with their reluctance to chase past officers even after repeated requests. Heck, the past board even got to timely resign in plea bargain to the immediate cash bonuses they approved and received than traditional stock options, denying obvious red flags. Owens fought to keep most other bonuses at a kangaroo AGM too!

I don't want to get into a pissing match in how morals and Christianity are correlated but it is not as though he criminally bullied a little girl out of mere road rage to merit promotion. Owens also unexpectedly departed.

Perhaps NT's culture felt a better shoe in would be some one who defrauds his past employer while joining a company struggling to regain credibility, to provide an ultimatum settlement, then tank the settlement with revisions after settling to claim profit on this tanking. Even the ethics officer walked, auditors of long time standing left...and so little commentary, so polite, it leaves too much to the imagination lending benefit of doubt and to minimize further damage, etc..

Triple profits followed Gary's departure, but they were revised too, in downplayed estimates that doubled to creditors increasing cash collateral requirements they printed Nortel paper to pay, listing their largest pension in Canada as a mere footnote before it was closed. The 20 buck buying opportunities, etc, all by a .huggable honest looking guy but actions speak louder than words and who knows what the heck Nortel does to these fall guys risking careers.

Like I say, it wasn't like Gary grabbed anyone's face or something to merit promotion in an area foreign to him. He didn't deserve the slander he had to come forward to dismiss. How many are still there in their "crazy levels" Owens termed "difficult to find".

I suspect they will fold before the fraud trials if I may be so bold and bashing that would alleviate even more questions. After all their long extended repair of numbers are still not SEC blessed after how many years now. Now I feel like a conspiracy theorist and definitely not a post I feel proud of but some one has to say it in opposition. =)

I hate to be nostalgic specially nowadays where it seems there is no light at the end of the tunnel for Nortel.....But I can't avoid thinking about what Mr. Gary Daischendt (and Kunis) could have done with Nortel if he had the proper support to turn things around. At that time the stock was worth something ($29) and market timing was right for Nortel to become a real services and enterprise company. If it wasn't for the total lack of visibility of the lackluster board of directors and the executive goons comfortably sitting on their buttocks.......things could be really really different today for Nortel.

NorthernT,

where is the article that Canada will extend cash to Nortel. taxpayers will oppose a 'bailout'. there is no such public announcement. oh so now the bad economy has been poor for 3 years.

carrier infrastructure is what has made Nortel. it made blunders selling off access which became key. selling off a major carrier division is another blunder that will be felt 2 years from now. John Roese says selling MEN has been a 2 year process. well 2 years ago they created MEN for high growth, touted it as the future of Nortel blah blah blah. Now the rhetoric is applications and software. well why keep wireless around then. and all that enterprise routing for that matter? Services will be be broken up to follow business unit sales unless Nortel is going to carry the burden of tech support etc.

Ok for getting into apps, you need major acquisitions with skin in the game. You need the right people. You cannot do everything alone but also cannot leave it to partners like Microsoft who will chew you out and spit you out like bubblegum once the sweetness is gone. Neither can you do it by outsourcing everything. You need a brand with your own competency instead of depending on partners to do it all for you.

Nortel is nowhere in web 2.0. nowhere in apps. all it has is UC most of it OEM. by the time it builds this as a competency its too late. and even if it does, all these apps will run over infrastructure.

it would be easier to just spin out a business unit, seed them with capital, take an equity stake and get things rolling much faster outside of Nortel rather than stifle it inside corporate Nortel.

Let me ask you a question Mark, do you think it's right to short sell a global communication networking company like Nortel when they are restructuring, laying off and settling a lawsuit worth billions.Analyst's have helped out the short sellers in bringing the stock down with the continued negativity.Always doom and gloom.Let's let the Chinese supply all the equipment, eh Mark. That's what will happen if Nortel fades away and 30,000 jobs lost.Nortel was clear in 05 that it would emerge as a different company and that it would take 3-5 years.Getting out of the infrastructure business is the right move and the strategy to move into Next Generation Communication Software Solutions is the right move.There partnership with Microsoft and LG is paying big dividends.Sell-off divisions pay-off big part of debt and re - emerge as global player in services and communication software solutions with 500,000 mill shares outstanding.Comment please and don't mention cash burn. If Nortel needs cash the Canadian Gov. announced today that it would supply credit. Mike has been pretty good in managing Nortel's cash balance given the all the costs associated with lay-offs and lawsuits and bad economy for the last 3 years for telecom.

NorthernT,

Time will tell if Mike Z. and his team are making the right long-term strategic moves. Right now, the market is clearly skeptical.

Mark

"Joel Hackney, the head of enterprise solutions, saw his pay jump 21 per cent to $2.03 million"
Also note the performance of this green player's promotion to Enterprise. Maybe Joel can do whatever he likes after all to the horror of their employees =)

CEO backs him and was not shy to claim $20 was a buying opportunity last August that proved more of a detriment in contradiction than boost in confidence. Heck, the reverse spit to entice institutions fostered greater results, for a while anyways. Imagine trading at 16 cents today. they would be delisited.

From 30 bucks adjusted to 1.65 today is a lot of lost ground it can not recover with its ongoing worsening outlook needless to say.

Perhaps people would have more confidence if they forecast better to flex some credibility. Perhaps this is part of the problem further fueling decline and lack of confidence to their optimism gone bust and this point of no return. Perhaps investors would have supported an honest pessimist more than a contradicting cheerleader.

Never mind the market meltdown, what happens if customers go on strike all at once fearing they won't be around next year. It can still get torpedoed in this perfect storm, a storm it is more than overwhelmingly likely to sink in with so many overkills looming with so many worse case scenarios.

In 1999 Nortel created some intellectual property and employees spun out into a company called GoPin:
http://patents.ic.gc.ca/cipo/cpd/en/patent/2293...

GoPin changed its name to I4 Commerce:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_...

Last year I4 Commerce changed its name to BillMeLater:
http://www.allbusiness.com/services/business-se...

Yesterday eBay bought Bill Me Later for $945 million, which is more than all of Nortel's market cap of $913 million today.
http://profy.com/2008/10/06/ebay-acquires-bill-...

Conclusion: yet one more example of missed opportunity for a once great technology powerhouse.

At this point, the management may as well wait for the bottom and just buy up the company using the cash and take it private. Capital markets are going to be a thing of the past when this crisis really hits mainstreet.

Nortel as a company my fail, but if it can keep its head above water for the next couple of years this could still be a good turn around story. You guys in R&D and design would know best what cool stuff is coming in the future. That is the kind of stuff that sales will need to win.

Things more than ever are on Mike Z's sholders, he must keep Nortel solvent. Yes I know that does not make me sleep any better, but the credit issue that is world wide is not his making, but he must keep the money side of Nortel working.

Last year the execs got pay raises for a $60 million profit. Should these be rolled back now. Why are they making millions when the company is in the toilet.

>> Nortel Networks CEO Mike Zafirovski was awarded a 21.5-per-cent pay increase to $10.1 million last year despite continuing losses, layoffs and declining share prices at the struggling telecom-gear maker.

>> Richard Lowe, the head of Nortel's struggling carrier network division, got a 26-per-cent increase to $2.76 million.

>> Joel Hackney, the head of enterprise solutions, saw his pay jump 21 per cent to $2.03 million

unless there is something positive this story will continue. what else is there to talk about? if there is post something so people can discuss something to get their minds off. maybe close the blog and start another one on technology.

most of the employees cannot take it anymore. this is leading to depression.

Still, a bit pricey for toilet paper isn't it?

Still worth a lot more of your opinion, ass-hat.

you seem like an invester who just doesn't get it or an employee who keeps looking over his shoulder fearing his manager's gonna drop by and take him over to hr anytime soon, or maybe both. either way you seem tired and depressed and frustrated, and you might as well joke about it and at least get a laugh out of it

You're right about one thing - I'm tired, depressed, and frustrated. Absolutely correct. Just wish I could find a reason to get a laugh out of it. Laughter is the best medicine they say.

Can anyone tell me what the book value of Nortel shares is; that is, the average price of what people paid for a common share. Have long-term investors who were in at $100 ($10 pre-reverse split) sold out at huge losses?

I'm sure the book value or average of what people paid for Nortel shares is at 10X, 20X, 30X what the current share price is.

Share volumes being moved (sold and bought), even after Sep announcement have been only a small percentage of the 450 million plus shares.

My feeling is that 10% of the shareholders buying/selling/shorting over that last year are controlling the stock price and making it plummet. If there was a huge buy demand, the stock price should logically go way up.

The 90% of investors who have bought at 10X, 20X, 30X or more of the current stock price will never sell at this level. How can anyone get control?

Mark, can you please investigate this? To me, determining the book value of 450 million shares is a fundamental question. The current stock price may not be a correct view of investor sentiment...if only 10% are causing the free-fall.

I have seen couple of places that calculate NT's book value close to $5.5 per share. Now the sale of MEN is going to reduce the Book value but even after discounting for that, NT's book value is much much higher than its current stock price. That shows, that there is some value in it at this level. I have an open order at a little lower price than what it is trading now. I want to be a buyer at this distressed level. In the worst case scenario of complete chop up of the company expect to get at least $7 per share. A huge upside.