Slated For A Lower Opening

Stocks appeared set to open lower
Thursday.

Sonus Networks
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warned for
Q3 after the close. The company expects a Q3 loss in the range of 5-7 cents.
Analyst estimates were for a profit of 1 cent. Sonus also sees revenues falling
to $40 million from estimates of $54 million.

According to a report in the Wall
Street Journal, Reliant Resources
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said it will acquire Orion Power
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for $26.80 a share.

The European Central Bank has left
interest rates unchanged.

According to Goldman Sachs, Sprint PCS
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CTO expects the launch of Sprint’s 1XRTT network by the end of
June 2002.

Sysco Corp
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was upgraded by
Merrill Lynch to Near-Term Buy from Accumulate.

Merrill Lynch upgraded Citrix System
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to Long Term Buy from Accumulate.

Lehman Brothers downgraded Nortel
Networks
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from Neutral to Market Perform.

First Union downgraded Skechers U.S.A
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to Buy from Strong Buy.

ABN Amro downgraded the Oil Drillers
group
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.

Merrill Lynch said it does not see the
enterprise networking group recovering until next year and cut estimates for
Extreme Networks
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, Foundry Networks
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, F5 Networks
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and Enterasys
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.

Baker Hughes
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was downgraded
by ABN Amro from Buy to Add.

Durable good orders fell 0.3% for
August and Jobless Claims for the week of 9/22 rose 58,000 to 450,000.