ISRAEL TECH MISCELLANEOUS NEWS
AMDOCS DOUBLES BUYBACK PLAN TO 20 MILLION SHARES
Amdocs (NYSE: DOX) has announced a significant expansion of its buyback plan from 11 million to 20 million shares, despite the fact that it bought back only 600,000 of the 11 million promised in the previous round. Amdocs currently has 223 million floating shares. On November 6, the company announced a plan to buy back 11 million shares, but has done very little since then. The share, on the other hand, has plunged 60% in the past six months. Amdocs has $1.04 billion in cash, but spent only $15.5 million in buying back shares.
www.amdocs.com
NETRO UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
Investor C. Robert Coates has alleged serious conflicts of interest and gross mismanagement by digital wireless networking equipment provider Netro Corporation (Nasdaq: NTRO):
l Shlomo Yariv, now Netro's Chief Operating Officer, left his job at Innowave in July 2000 and formed Bungee Communications and a separate holding company for Bungee named SSY (Shlomo Yariv's initials).
l Three months later Netro invested $7.5 million in this overseas enterprise but did not disclose the exact terms of the investment. Bungee was supposed to develop the next generation of technology for Netro, so Netro was betting its future on Bungee.
l A few days later, on October 27th, Netro agreed to potentially pay up to $350 million to Shlomo Yariv and his holding company SSY for his share of Bungee.
l In that same year of 2000, Shlomo Yariv received 80,000 Netro options even though he was a Bungee employee, not a Netro employee.
l In May 2001, Yariv became Netro's COO. Netro kept paying millions of dollars of shareholders' money to Yariv's Bungee. Netro also gave Yariv options on 370,000 additional shares.
l In February 2002, Street.com reported that Netro had closed Bungee. This information does not appear in Netro's 10-K, 10-Q, or its proxy statement.
l During an April 17, 2002 quarterly conference call, Netro ‘offhandedly’ mentioned that Bungee had been closed down.
www.netro-corp.com
MERCURY COO EXERCISES $3.9 MILLION IN OPTIONS
Mercury Interactive (Nasdaq: MERC) COO Kenneth Klein has exercised 100,000 options at $39 a share – some $3.9 million. In February 2002 Klein sold a further 43,700 options at $39 a share – netting him $1.7 million. Klein holds another 256,000 options.
www.mercuryinteractive.com
ISRAEL TECH MISCELLANEOUS NEWS CONTINUED…
COMVERSE’S KOBI ALEXANDER TAKES 90% COMPENSATION CUT…
Comverse Technology (Nasdaq: CMVT) CEO Kobi Alexander has voluntarily cut his remuneration by 90%. Alexander was entitled to a salary of $672,000 and a $1.5 million bonus for 2001 but only pocketed $217,000.
www.comverse.com
…DITTO DELTA 3
Three senior executives at troubled IP services company Delta 3 (Nasdaq: DDDC) - Chairman Noam Bardin, CFO Paul Wyatt, and COO Shimi Zimmels - have cut their base salaries by a cumulative $150,000. In FY2001, the company recorded losses of $36 million on revenues of $15.6 million.
www.deltathree.com