As a result, Genuity’s total new orders for the fourth quarter of 2000 were down 17 percent vs. the third quarter of 2000. Genuity’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Paul R. Gudonis offered these comments today at the Salomon Smith Barney Media and Telecommunications conference in Phoenix, Arizona.
Our objective has been to address the eBusiness needs of the enterprise markets, and orders from corporate customers in the fourth quarter of 2000 continued to grow. At the same time, our orders from carriers and ISPs have tended to reflect what’s happening to Internet-centric companies across the market. Our results highlight Genuity’s strengths in delivering eBusiness network solutions to mid-size and Fortune 500 companies, said Gudonis.
In addition, with our leading position in broadband backbone services, we’ve experienced continued growth in that part of our operations. DSL subscribers served on Genuity’s backbone expanded by 69 percent sequentially during the fourth quarter to 233,000 at year-end, due to the growing subscriber counts at Verizon Online and our other leading national ISP customers, said Gudonis.
Mr. Gudonis also indicated that Genuity’s focus on providing Internet infrastructure and eBusiness solutions to enterprise customers based on its unique Black Rocket Network Services Platform (NSP) and its state-of-the-art Tier 1 network and web-hosting assets, will enable it to continue to capitalize on this growth market. Even though we expect continued strong growth in our target market, we cannot operate independently of the general economic framework that affects our customers. Using the IP services we offer, our customers can save costs as well as generate new sources of revenue. Therefore, we will continue our focus on marketing eSolutions to enterprise customers, and believe the long-term growth in Internet infrastructure services and eBusiness solutions will allow us to continue growing our revenue base and build shareholder value.
Genuity executives offered no changes to existing guidance regarding results for the fourth quarter of 2000 and for 2001 projections, but indicated that they are evaluating the impact of the slower economic activity.
