komentar von karlchen !
aber ruebe ist es nicht so das viele unternehmen zur zeit tod geschrieben werden ? wie war das damals mit apple ?
ich halte dieses interview sehr aufschlußreich und naja wie gesagt ist sehr spekulativ, aber ich bin hier sehr optimistisch !!!
Interview mit William Schrader
PSINet: Don`t Count It Out
(11/20/00, 4:05 p.m. ET) By Kate Gerwig, tele.com
PSINet Inc. is fighting a strong headwind these days. At a time when a lot of carriers face financial difficulties, PSINet co-founder, chairman, and chief executive Bill Schrader is girding for battle -- fending off doomsayers on Wall Street while trying to come up with the cash to keep his company going.
By way of background, PSINet (stock: PSIX) stock took a nosedive earlier this month when the company announced third-quarter earnings that included a \$1.4 billion loss and projected low earnings in the fourth quarter. Wall Street responded with lowered ratings and questions about how long the ISP can remain independent.
PSINet, Ashburn, Va., went into fix-it mode, with promises to slow its aggressive build-out of data centers and fiber that are supposed to turn it into an Internet "supercarrier." PSINet also plans to sell off some non-core assets, including e-business consulting company Xpedior Inc., and pieces of IT consulting company Metamore Worldwide Inc., both of which it only acquired in June.
While Bill Schrader said the company isn`t for sale, the company announced Thursday it will work with Goldman, Sachs & Co. to consider strategic alliances or the possible sale of all or some of PSINet. It also said that a bank has made a margin call on 11.4 million shares of Schrader`s PSINet stock. After acquiring 74 companies in the last few years, critics charge the company with expanding too fast and into branching areas not related to its core bandwidth and access services for enterprise, wholesale, and dial-up customers.
Schrader has been busy rallying employees, shareholders, suppliers, and customers, while he contends with several class-action suits filed on behalf of shareholders. Schrader talked with tele.com about his fight to convince investors and analysts that his company is only in a slow patch and not just another gasping dot-com, while, at the same time, also keep his company running.
tele.com: Is PSINet for sale after remaining independent for 10 years?
Schrader: PSINet is not on the block. We have fiduciary obligations to treat a serious offer seriously, but we are not for sale. It`s a very messy market out there, and we have a lot of assets. Unlike most of our competition, our assets are bought and paid for and working. Our competition is still building and trying to catch up with us in the middle of what I consider to be a serious recession. What we have to do is stop building. Apparently Wall Street doesn`t understand our current inventory of fiber and hosting centers and they`re worried we won`t be able to maintain our growth.
tele.com: Do you have enough cash on hand to operate?
Schrader: If we maintained our growth rates from the plan we had already announced to the street, we would need more cash next year. If we don`t maintain that plan-and we`ve slowed it down-if we can slow capital expenditure for fiber and hosting centers, which we have done, we`ll be OK. Wall Street went a little overboard, and lumped us in with companies that are so near being out of cash that they thought we were the same. But at end of the third quarter, we had \$1 billion in cash.
tele.com: What about your debt-to-equity ratio? Do you plan to get that down?
Schrader: Right now all Wall Street cares about is survival for us. Capital markets are closed to almost everybody. We`ll handle our capital very differently than when capital markets are open. If we slow our growth rate down because we want to only focus on high margin opportunities, then we start producing cash, and the world changes. We don`t manage our company to the whims of Wall Street, but we do manage it so we have a proper balance sheet for stability.
tele.com: What will you sell off? What`s not core?
Schrader: There are some components of Metamore Worldwide and Xpedior that we always planned to sell off. Hindsight is 20/20, and in retrospect, the market went down considerably, so it`s not worth as much as when we bought it. That was our \$1 billion write-off for Metamore/Xpedior. Their entire industry dropped in value. Xpedior is doing a turnaround just like everybody else, and yes, it`s one of the ones we might sell off. We declared it a discontinued operation, and we hired an investment banker to assist us.
tele.com: Where does the build-out of your Pan-European network stand?
Schrader: It`s nearly complete. We have so much bandwidth over there, we won`t have to mess with it for several years.
tele.com: Would you say Wall Street misread or over-reacted to PSINet`s situation?
Schrader: Yes. They`ve listened to one thing only, and that is our need for cash. Given the environment, let`s be realistic. All telecom companies are trading at a 52-week low. Some big ones are trading at an all-time low, as are we. The technology sector in general is seeing a recession. Under all circumstances, those things would look scary. When Wall Street gets scared, it responds by reducing prices.
The second thing is, other than the recession, the election and petrol prices and disturbances in the Middle East, all make Wall Street nervous, as they should. It makes me nervous. It`s why we`re being very cautious. As are some companies who didn`t have a billion at the end of the third quarter -- and they might not make it.
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