“Bill was a safe pair of hands, but when it came to dealing with a dynamic market and a bruised company, I think there is just a little bit of lost momentum. He is doing the right thing by stepping down. A lot of lesser men might not have been willing to step down.”
“We believe Cisco will not meet consensus revenue estimates in fiscal 2002 and expect it will no longer be able to rely on appreciating stock as a currency,”
“Never say never, but this is as close as you can get to never. It's ludicrous on the face of it, and it's not any more believable the longer you think about it.”
“We may be a bit early with this call, but we believe Cisco's results have bottomed, ... The US (50 percent of revenues) actually saw 13 percent revenue growth this quarter. Europe will likely remain weak but may also bottom by the end of 2001. We are still concerned about Asia.”
“While Mr. Owens deserves praise for stepping into a very tough role after the firing of CEO Frank Dunn, we had been increasingly concerned about strategic drift at Nortel, ... In addition, he signally failed to deliver on a promise for greater transparency in financial reporting.”
“The past CEO deserves a lot of credit for stepping into a difficult role, ... The simple fact is that Nortel needs a house cleaning and it needs more focus. And from all reports, Mike is the kind of guy to do all of those.”
“Might it be that Cisco and Nokia talked about a closer selling relationship? Sure. Maybe that's where it all started. But it's, 'Let's get together for the game,' vs. 'Let's get married.' It's a huge difference.”
