Nortel Stock Price

Nortel is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world with representative operations in 150 countries. The main thrust of its philosophy today is bringing “state of the art” high technology communications solutions to users in every possible situation. Nortel started life in 1895 in Ontario in Canada and has been involved in innovation in the field of telecommunications ever since. Nortel made the first field telephone to be used during World War One in Flanders (now part of Belgium) and the first dialing equipment - used on a PBX in a Canadian Brewery. That was long before the “A” went into the abbreviation to make the Private Branch Exchange Automatic. Millions of businesses around the world, Fortune 500 companies and government institutions work with Nortel equipment and systems - the company has an excellent reputation in the areas of reliability and security. Systems are tailored to specific needs, whether they be for the transmission of voice or data, and with the customers’ own vital parameters as the primary design starting point. A list of Nortel customers reads like a Who’s Who of business all over the world. In fact, it’s Nortel who provide the telecommunications network for the New York Stock Exchange, along with some eighty of the country’s top hundred banks and the Department of Defense. Nortel stock has generally been a “safe” buy. Certainly over the last several years, stability has been a keynote. From the first quarter of 1983 through the end of 1998, the share price climbed steadily then, after a brief dip, it climbed aggressively to reach a high just off that magic hundred dollar mark ahead of the crash of 2001. Currently, Nortel stock is trading within a fairly narrow band, between $2.50 and $2.70. but whereas sentiment has been bullish, it’s expected to swing towards bearish this week. The stock’s home market of Toronto is anticipating a quiet period and, whilst the stock hasn’t been reacting to anything specific, there’s an anticipation of resistance to C$3.45 ($2.81). That was, in fact, the price at which the stock peaked in New York, on 15th July - the only previous occasion it tested that level was during the first week in June when it briefly touched $2.90. Nortel last year had total revenues of $9.8 billion

and showed a loss on that of $111 million. However, the company always has and continues to invest huge sums in Research and development. At the same time, projects that companies like this get involved in, do not come to fruition in short time-scales - it’s not like WalMart selling you a TV set and you’re paying them for it before they’ve paid their supplier - cash-flow is always going to be negative contributor to a major communications operator like Nortel. Without specific details of work in progress, it’s obviously difficult to make precise predictions about future revenue or profitability but it’s unlikely in the extreme that there’s anything that need deter a potential investor.