Alcatel Ericsson Fujitsu Huawei Technologies Siemens Nokia

Several European and Asian vendors have built significant U.S. presences and want even more of your business. But as these vendors pitch their wares, how can you determine their financial viability? Because they're not based in the U.S., we don't include them in the Network World 200, our annual report card on the 200 biggest domestic network companies.

Here we do the due diligence for you on six of the biggest internationally based network gear vendors. For the public companies, we began by culling quarterly and annual reports filed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (If a company sells stock in the U.S. as a foreign issuer, it must file financial data with the SEC. But the reporting differs from what is required of domestic companies.) We then sifted through other documents - press statements, for example, in which a company, public or private, might discuss finances. Wherever possible, we attempted to obtain U.S.-specific information, yet this data is entirely dependent on a vendor's willingness to provide it. Some have sporadically reported U.S. figures, others reveal North American data or combine the entire Western Hemisphere into a region called "the Americas." Still others offer no regional data.

The figures presented here are intended to help you gauge a company's financial health, compared with itself a year ago. Conversions to U.S. dollars are estimated, where necessary, for your convenience.

ALCATEL Financial highlights     2003 worldwide revenue:   $15.8 billion* (12.5 billion euros) 2002 worldwide revenue:   $20.2 billion (16 billion euros) 2003 net loss:   -$2.4 billion (-1.9 billion euros) % of sales from North America:   15% in 2003; 15%, U.S. sales only, in 2002. Fiscal year ends:   December Stock symbol:   ALA (NYSE) * Conversions per Dec. 31, 2003, exchange rate of 1 euro = $1.26.

Like nearly all network vendors that earn significant portions of their income from the service provider sector, Alcatel is in the final stages of a multi-year restructuring it hopes will boost its hurting bottom line. Driving this makeover was Alcatel's decision to concentrate more fully on its network business by shedding unrelated units. It has made significant progress, selling off defense electronics, nuclear power and optical component lines, for instance.