Alvarion Ltd. (ALVRQ)

[midastouch017]

“We’ll see growth every quarter”

Alvarion’s Tvika Friedman: Current trials should become sales soon.

Hadass Geyfman 9 Feb 06 16:05

“We’re satisfied that we’ve renewed quarterly growth,” Alvarion (Nasdaq: ALVR; TASE: ALVR) president and CEO Tvika Friedman said when the company’s reports for the fourth quarter and all of 2005 were published. “Sales of the BreezeMAX system in the quarter totaled $10 million. Solutions not based on WiMAX also performed well, despite the ongoing switch to WiMAX. We expect that fixed WiMAX activity will continue to constitute the main growth engine in 2006.”
Alvarion projects $46-51 million in sales in the first quarter of 2006, and a pro forma loss of $0.03-0.06 per share.

"Globes": How are you preparing for intensifying competition in the mobile WiMAX market?

Friedman: ”We now have a demo of a mobile WiMAX system, and we estimate that we’ll have a commercial product by early 2007. We plan to leverage our strong brand name, the products that have proved themselves in practice, and our 30% market share in fixed WiMAX, to make the company a significant player in mobile WiMAX. There’s a difference between a stable working product and waiting for new products that may not work at the same level of service. There’s a difference between playing with a new product and providing actual service.”

How would you sum up the fourth quarter?

”During the quarter, we increased the proportion of our WiMAX sales in our total sales. We succeeded in selling, and also in operating Outremer’s large network in Martinique and Guadeloupe, while meeting the deadline. This network is already working.

”In the fourth quarter, we signed a new $15 million contract with Telmex, including an initial $7 million order. This contract includes both WiMAX and products not based on WiMAX. As for 2005, during the year we sent customers large commercial quantities of end-user products based on Intel’s new chip.

”Looking ahead, we’re continuing to invest in fixed and mobile WiMAX, and are developing systems that work on frequencies that will enable us to operate in additional countries. As of now, we have put out a 3.5-gigahertz system, and we’re now working on 2.3-gigahertz, 2.5-gigahertz, 3.3-gigahertz, and 3.6-gigahertz systems. The 2.3-gigahertz, and 2.5-gigahertz frequencies, for example, are very popular in North America and the Asia-Pacific region.”

What do you expect in 2006?

”We believe that we’ll see growth in every quarter in 2006. The trials that we are now conducting are likely to become sales during the coming year. Furthermore, we’ll launch a new product this year that customers can install themselves. This product opens a very large market to us that we have never before operated in. We believe that it will boost our sales in 2006.”

Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on February 9, 2006

http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/DocView.asp?did=1000059900&fid=980

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