Nortia Research

Thursday, July 23, 2009

iFeelPixel

Welcome to iFeelPixel Association: the Universal Digital Access. We are demonstrating the possibilities of the haptic technology.

Our goal is to make accessible and interactive pictures elements. We’ve clearly entered the age of universal access, regardless of disability.

We develop the iFeelPixel™ Multimodal application to help disabled people access computers and interact with their graphical environment through three senses: vision, touch and hearing.

iFeelPixel software provides visio-tactile sensations, audio-tactile informations and tactile feedback based on pictures elements (Text, Games, Graphics... you can feel any sort of pixel under your cursor)

iFeelPixel is a collaborative project with international developers and industrial partners:
INRIA, Immersion Corporation, Logitech, Novint Technologies

iFeelPixel™ main benefits (see iFeelPixel features for details):
. Adds instantly tactile effects and sounds to any image
. Offers a multisensory immersion environment with any graphic
. Feel the web, the desktop, pictures and applications trough a simple mouse
. Revolutionary technology adds the sense of touch to your computing experience
. Pixel detection, carried out in real time, is announced by haptic effects and tactile sensations

Level 3 Appeals Patent Ruling In Favor Of Limelight

from law360.com:

Level 3 Communications LLC has appealed a January judgment in favor of Limelight Networks Inc. in the ongoing patent dispute between the two companies related to Internet content delivery network technology.

Equinix 2Q results: exceeding 2008 record booking levels

Equinix (EQIX) reported 2Q 2009 results Wednesday night (see Company’s P/R and Seeking Alpha conference call transcripts).

Expectations were exceeded on all fronts: revenues came in at $ 213.2 Million (consensus $ 208.8 Million), EBITDA was $ 99.5 Million, exceeding Company’s forecast ($ 92/94 Million), and EPS were $0.46 ($0.44 diluted), well beyond analysts’ expectations ($0.33).

The Company narrowed its 2009 revenue forecast, increasing the lower end of expectations from $ 855 to $860 Million (and the bracket is now $860 to $ 875 Million), upped adjusted EBIDTA from between $370.0 and $385.0 Million to between $ 380 and 390 Million (a great sign of the leverage of the business model), and announced two further expansion plans (more on this later).

As usual, we’ll go through some of the metrics we check to dig deeper into Equinix results:

Net cabinets additions were 900 in the USA (in spite of a large pro-active churn in the Silicon Valley market), 300 in Asia and about 1,100 cabinets equivalents in Europe (that contributed the most to this quarter’s revenue increase);
Cash gross margins came in at 65%, ahead of expectations, with Europe reaching 55% (up from 51% last quarter), while USA enjoys a steady 69% rate;
A record 255 10 Gig ports on the Equinix Exchange (31 additional ones in the quarter), while traffic on the same service in the USA reached a peak of 340 gigabit per second, a 13.3% increase over last quarter;
MRR per cabinets increased in all markets, with US reaching $ 1,893 per cabinet (a 1.9% Q/Q increase). Asia and Europe exceeded this Q/Q growth rate (2.9% and 6.9% respectively), although in the case of Europe the exchange rate and seasonal factors impacted the number, and pricing was described as stable during the call;
new Frankfurt (Germany) expansion plan – an interesting acquisition of a distressed, former Exodus data center that will be “Equinized” and available for customers from 4Q 2009 and will see a Blue Chip anchor tenant from the opening;
demand from the financial vertical remained very strong , leading to the announcement of the Secaucus phase 3 expansion project, adding another 1,250 sellable cabinets in this key market for the Financial eXchange – NY4 to become Equinix largest data center;
new record booking results in the U.S. and a solid booking performance in both Europe and Asia;
Improved EBITDA as a percentage of revenues in all markets, with US now at 50.8% (up from 50.4% last quarter), Asia at 45.5% (up from 45.4%), and Europe at 37.4% (up from 34.2%);
pricing remains strong in all markets, in spite of the economy.

As a reminder, the Company has a very interesting “non financial Metrics” spreadsheet available for download on its Investor Relations web page where you can find more information.

In order to give a very balanced view of the Company’s performance, we’ve also looked for some negatives, although this probably requires some more effort:

a couple of expansion plans were slightly delayed - the LA1 expansion downtown has been moved from 4Q 2009 to 1Q 2010 (while the new LA4 El Segundo opening remains on schedule for later this quarter) and the new Paris 3 phase 1 has been shifted from last quarter to this quarter;
churn is expected to be slightly higher than anticipated in the second half of 2009, as a result of some customers going bankruptcy in this difficult economic landscape. While Equinix expects this event to obviously impact in the short term the growth rate, in the long term it does expect to be able to re-sell the available space at the same or even at a higher rate;
interconnection business continues to slide in term of percentage on revenues (down to 13% of total revenues from 15% in the Q 2008), although the Company reinforces that it is still very focused on this aspect of the business model, that is just being introduced in Europe and through the creation of new services and products that will leverage the interconnection strength of its centers;
a longer “book to bill” time frame, mainly due to the complexity of some deployments, that will impact 2009 and not allow to convert some high booking levels achieved in a few centers into immediate revenues.

Let’s now have a look at two important metrics: growth rate and expansion capacity.

This spreadsheet (click to enlarge) clearly shows that Equinix has apparently reversed the percentage Q/Q growth rate trend, that reached a bottom in 4Q 2008 and is now back at 3Q 208 levels. Worth noting that we are still talking about a Company growing revenues each and every quarter in spite of the surrounding economic climate…

Our forecast is for the Company to achieve the high end of the revenue expectations for 2009, i.e $ 875 Million, which might make reaching total revenues of $ 1 billion in 2010 a target requiring less than 15% Y/Y growth, a number that might, right now, sound conservative given some comments made during the conference call (emphasis added):

Steve Smith
As we begin to think about 2010 and beyond we still believe our strong market and financial position will enable us to emerge and even accelerate our market leadership when we get to the other side of these financially challenging times. The $ 314 million in capital raised in early June was an important step to provide us the added flexibility to pursue this opportunity while staying ahead of the future capacity constraints we expect to face from accelerating fill rates in key markets.
I would like to now provide you some color from our original operations. In the U.S. market, we experienced a record bookings performance in the quarter, which eclipsed our previous record from Q2 2008.
Additionally our outbound multinational bookings to both Europe and Asia came it at an all time high with particular strength in our Amsterdam, London, Paris and Singapore markets. In fact we now have over 175 customers that are deployed in multiple regions with Equinix, an increase of over 100 customers since the end of Q3 2008, which is a solid proof point of the value of our global scale and reach.
The sales team in the U.S. did a terrific job this quarter in bringing us back inline with our 2008 booking rates while maintaining our pricing objectives despite the recessionary environment we are operating in.

Here is an updated spredsheet showing the additional capacity Equinix will bring to its markets – please note that you may find an expansion tracking sheet on the Equinix web site:

Europe, as we said, was the largest contributor to revenue growth in the quarter (about 52%), with an increase of $7.3 Million. As underlined over the call, there are a few factors (seasonality in power costs and positive effect of the exchange rate) that effected this great result (quotes from the conference call):

Keith Taylor
Europe revenues increased to $55.1 million in the quarter at 15% sequential improvement. The result of continued strong bookings higher than expected power revenues and stronger currencies compared to the US dollar.
With respect to Europe, our weighted average price per sellable Cab-E increased to $1,009 compared to $994 adjusted last quarter. This improvement reflects two key factors, a higher than expected increase in power revenues in the quarter and a weakening US dollar. Absent these two factors EU pricing has remained firm over the quarter.
Certainly we know we have got the benefit of the tailwinds from currency and that we see that as a positive, because relative to last year we were getting a fairly substantial headwind with currency.
Absent currency, you can take out roughly five bullet points, so you would be roughly 10% quarter-over-quarter. The benefit of that was really coming from power and then to increase volume.

A few comments on the call were made about the financial vertical. As we wrote in the past, we believe this eco system has been a great growth driver for the Company, which is strengthening its leadership position in the colo sector (see our previous articles - Insatiable Demand for Colocation Services and Colocation and the Financial Industry):

[Kolby Nezo - Koffin Brothers]
My next question has to deal with, just trying to quantify how big the market opportunity is? So financial services to their financial exchange obviously, have been a huge growth for you guys. When you try to figure out how long this is going to last? How many more customers are out that actually go after, maybe you can give us some parameters on that, so could you help get a better understanding of how long this significant growth is going to last? Thanks.
Steve Smith
Yes, I’ll take the last question first. We think at this point now, [Kolby], we’re in the lower single digits of market share at a pretty rapid growth rate in the CFX ecosystem. So, there are literally thousands of these companies buy side, sell side technology companies in the space. We are very focused on large pops. We are very focused on matching engines. We are very focused on the magnets that will attract other members that want to come in and connect with them.
So, there are plenty of companies around the world, many of these companies are looking for multi-region deployment. So one of the advantages we have over most or all of our competitors is the fact that we can deploy them in the top ten financial cities around the world. I mean all top ten financial cities on the charts were deployed in. So that is a huge advantage and we’re very, very early in the stages we believe on enabling these companies.
With the push into electronic trading, our pipeline is just very, very solid with opportunities across probably today’s five or six markets, we think that will go to seven or eight and up to ten markets as the things starts to evolve

And also:

The financial vertical continues to be our primary ecosystem driver in this region (Europe) with several strategic wins booked in the quarter in Amsterdam, Frankfurt and London.

To end our comments, another solid quarter, as the Company keeps executing its business plan. An improved economy, and the lack of building activity, due to the recent credit crunch, from competitors might really push Equinix toward a much higher target, in the next few years, than anticipated. The Company has the cash on hand and enjoys a great free cash flow from operations to support further expansion.

As we wrote a few times, an interesting investment opportunity for a 2010 and beyond time frame.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Cypress Semiconductor - Immersion 2/2

Some more from CY conference call (available on seeking Alpha):

Sandy Harrison - Signal Hill

Thanks for that update. Just a quick clarification on a prior question on the True Touch and I guess T.J., you had asked when they could get to 10 million a quarter. Was that Q3 of this year or Q3 of next year?

Norman P. Taffe

This year.

Sirini Pijirri - Analyst

Okay, got it. And then just a couple of questions on the True Touch -- obviously you guys have had a lot of success and a lot of buzz about the touch market. My question is, I mean, what do you worry most about in this market? Are you seeing any new competitors out there or you know, some of the issues that you can talk about for the next couple of years?

Norman P. Taffe

As far as competition in this space, it’s a very exciting market. There’s going to be lots of competitors, no doubt about that. I think the broad growth of the market and the move from resistant to capacitive is going to make a lot of room for a lot of people to succeed. We are very confident in our position. We’ve gotten very good technology. It’s very flexible and we are right now, we are quite sure we’re gaining significant market share in terms of design sockets and we intend to keep doing that. But it’s definitely going to be very competitive. Any market that has grown this fast attracts a lot of people trying to get into it.

Adam Benjamin - Jefferies

Thanks, guys. Nice job. Just a couple more follow-ups on the touch side -- I think last call, you talked about having design wins norm with all five of the tier ones. You announced the LG KS360 back in February and you announced the Omni HD today. If you look out to the back half of this year, on top of those that you are already shipping, can you talk about how many other tier ones you expect to ship this year and roughly how many models you are looking at?

Norman P. Taffe

It completely depends on the end customer but I will tell you we are shipping in some where they just don’t want us to announce that, even if it’s publicly known, so there’s additional ones that we are already shipping in.

I think what I can say is we do have wins, and design wins at six of the top eight and we are quite active on a seventh of the top eight suppliers, so that momentum continues to kind of what we described earlier.

As far as shipping before the end of this year, looking over at Chris I believe I guess the answer is --

Christopher A. Seams

We’ll ship at five or six of those -- probably seven [inaudible].

Norman P. Taffe

Yeah, I would say that, so there will be first shipments there. Now, whether we announce them or not, it really highly depends on how open they are in terms of disclosing what technology -- I mean, we do whatever the customer’s preference is there and a lot of the customers are very sensitive about that but we are getting -- having quite a bit of success at all the top guys, really.

T. J. Rodgers

And the other thing too is we’re finding you are getting more design wins, the attach rate is far greater at each of these than we expected going in, so --

Norman P. Taffe

Yeah, I think it’s safe to assume that if we get a win, we get more than one win and in some cases, we literally at some of the top tiers got double-digit wins, and in most -- very few of those are shipping as yet.

T. J. Rodgers

So I think the way to look at it too is the number of design wins in individual handsets, which we are not going to get into a practice of going down to the number or which ones, and I know you guys like to track them but as Norm said, from a customer standpoint, we just cannot do that and we are not going to go down that level. But we are shipping on a very small number of the wins right now. That’s why we have a fairly high confidence on that $100 million mark that we talked about.

Cypress Semiconductor - Immersion 1/2

Digging into CY conference call (available on seeking Alpha), there's actually much more than I first underlined.

For sure IMMR and CY seem to share the idea that mobile phones are just the beginning:

Brad W. Buss

True touch, our new touch-screen product, continued to grow rapidly and we’ve more than doubled its revenue in Q2, as we added additional customers and handset models into volume production. We continue to see a very strong design win and many of the handset vendors and we expect to see a multi-year growth coming out of that. And we expect it again to probably be our fastest programmable product to hit $100 million in our history.

T. J. Rodgers

The second thing that is happening to us is what’s called true touch, or what we call true touch. True touch is nothing but cap sense with the ability to sense capacitors in a like your track pad on your little -- on your personal computer, on your laptop, except in the case of true touch, the capacitor array is made from [inaudible], which is the clear electrode, a clearer conducting material. And that electrode is on a foil which is laid over the top of a screen, so you can see through it.

So you think you are touching an image on a screen -- in reality, you are touching invisible electrodes that are overlaid over that and then True Touch senses the XY position of your finger and whatever device you have knows what image you are touching because it’s creating that image and that’s in effect how touch screens get created.

We’ve got a design in the Samsung mobile phone, so that’s a big line design win for us. We’ve had another design win in the Sharp waterproof mobile phone. So we are starting to see, and Norm can talk more about this later, the turn on of true touch as a touch-screen type controlling.

Suji De Silva - Kaufman Brothers

Okay, good. And then secondly on true touch, I know you made a comment there, this will be the fasted product to $100 million in your history. What is that timeframe implied by that, looking at past products? And also if you could talk about the top five handset guys, how -- if you expect to penetrate all five over time? Thanks.

Brad W. Buss

On the 100, again, we’re just trying to give a data point where we are not looking to say it’s going to happen in X period or X year. I think it will happen quicker than normal and we’ll just leave it at that, put the burden on sales and Norm to continue delivering those big design wins.

T. J. Rodgers

Well, when do you expect the touch screen will pass $10 million per quarter?

Norman P. Taffe

Very soon. Very soon.

John Pitzer - Credit Suisse

I guess, Brad, on the True Touch part, can you help us understand the gross margin evolution we should expect on that part? And I guess T.J., as you think about the evolution of just the touch screen market, clearly handsets, big uptake coming. When do you see PCs coming and how are you positioned there? And if you could walk through the different competing technologies and how you think True Touch lines up, that would be great.

T. J. Rodgers

Those are all True Touch questions. Norm is best to answer them. Norm.

Norman P. Taffe

I’ll start I guess with your last question about the competing technologies -- the competing technologies, historically the market for touch screen has been a resistive market. One of the biggest growth factors which is helping everybody in this space that we are seeing a fairly rapid transition from resistive technologies, which you would be familiar historically on things like ATMs, et cetera, that have touch screens towards capacitive. Capacitive is much better in terms of the clarity of a screen, therefore it’s much more useful in handsets. We’re seeing handsets move from resistant to capacitive very rapidly and drive the growth. It also is more durable because you don’t physically compress the screen to it touch.

That’s the biggest driver. Within the touch screen itself, within the capacitive touch screen state, there’s been different types of implementation. Part of the reason we are having such great success on the design end is we are the leader in what was called multi-touch all points, which is a mutual capacitive approach to touch screens which allows you to recognize independent fingers on a screen.

Most previous solutions in the market have suffered from -- they may be able to recognize two fingers but actually not independently, and therefore there is something called ghosting, which has affected literally almost any touch screen you see out there.

I can’t name the customer but a recent very well-reviewed phone that uses our first generation touch controller technology has really gotten a lot of reviews, rave reviews on its touch screen capability because it eliminates that and it uses a multi-touch all point capability.

That capability is putting us in a very strong position and allowing us to get a lot of wins, very few of which that we are really showing any revenue from yet, but will significantly impact the back half of this year and then throughout next year.

Another comment, I think another part of your question was what about beyond the handset space, some of the other market places. I’m glad you brought that up because we do believe touch screen is significantly more impactful than the capacitive market, even though we had and built a very strong business [in capacitive] [inaudible], we expect touch to be quite a bit bigger. And part of that is because it’s one, being adopted even more broadly in handsets but it’s also being adopted in all kinds of other markets, like gaming devices, netbooks, notebooks, printers, even automotive is an area we are seeing quite a bit of early design-ins.

So I think there’s a big opportunity and we are participating in all the segments, not just the handset segment.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Rhode Island Hospital First in State to Bring CyberKnife for the Treatment of Tumors

from lifespan.org:

>>Rhode Island Hospital First in State to Bring CyberKnife for the Treatment of Tumors

Radiosurgery Center of Rhode Island, LLC, a partnership of Rhode Island Hospital and 21st Century Oncology, announces the launch of the CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System for the non-invasive treatment of tumors. The Radiosurgery Center is located on the Rhode Island Hospital campus, the first site in the state to offer this treatment for patients.

Dr. John R. Adler resigning from ARAY board

Change in Directors or Principal Officers

Item 5.02(b). Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors; Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers.

On July 19, 2009, the Board of Directors (the "Board") of Accuray Incorporated (the "Company") received notification from Dr. John R. Adler, Jr. that he is resigning from the Company's Board, effective immediately, in order to pursue other interests. Dr. Adler, a founder of the Company, has served on the Board since the Company's inception and his current term is scheduled to expire in November 2011.

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. - Immersion

some follow up to the announcement of the IMMR - CY cooperation:

from Cypress Semiconductor Corp. recent P/R abour 2Q 2009 results -

>>+ Cypress has licensed Immersion Corporation’s patented TouchSense^® haptic (touch feedback) technology to deliver single-chip user interface controllers with tactile feedback. Cypress will integrate this technology with its TrueTouch touchscreen and CapSense capacitive touch solutions to improve the end-user interface experience in mobile phones, GPS systems, keyboards, white goods and other systems.

+ Sharp Communications Group has selected Cypress’s TrueTouch solution to power the waterproof touchscreen on its KDDI Sportio water beat mobile phone.

+ Cypress announced several design wins for its CapSensetouch-sensing solution, a low-cost, reliable, button-free interface for thousands of consumer electronics and white goods products. New CapSense designs include LG’s W53 and W54 LCD monitors, four new Acer Aspire notebook computer models, and Whirlpool and Indesit washing machines. CapSense is also being used in Wacom’s Bamboo™ tablet, a graphical input device that converts handwritten text and drawings into digital documents.

+ HP has selected CapSense technology to drive the touch-sensitive TouchSmart™ control panel on the new HP Photosmart™ C4600 All-in-One Series printer.

from Seeking Alpha conference call transcripts:

>>John Barton - Cowen

Thank you very much. If I could go back to the comments about touch screen and the competitive dynamics, I don’t know, T.J., Chris, whoever, or Norm -- but what are the current dynamics when customers are looking at silicon solutions versus sub assemblies? How much engineering expertise is out there in the customer base? How much do customers really want to have control of the firmware so they can make changes, et cetera? I mean, how do you see that today and how do you see that playing out over the next year or so?

Norman P. Taffe

Good question. As far as the evolution of that space, certainly one of the things I think driving our success right now is we’ve definitely seen it move from a -- the large suppliers looking for a silicon based solution as far as versus maybe the very early market, more module based. So they do want more control over the supply chain. I will tell you that one of the things that allows us to differentiate and keep the real players fairly small at this point is there’s a ton of expertise required, not just in terms of the product itself but in terms of understanding the whole stack-up in terms of the screen itself, the IPO material -- that it is not a simple market from that standpoint and still all of the largest handset players do rely on the touch screen solution providers to have significant investment in terms of supporting them and helping them design these touch screens. They are not -- it is a much more difficult problem to solve than the cap sense problem, even though it’s based on similar technology. [I’d say that’s a good thing.] It allows us to differentiate.

But we have moved into the phase where we see the predominant design [inaudible], silicon based, looking for us to provide the silicon while they choose the partners. And our early on strategy of partnering with every major ITO supplier, we think is starting to pay significant dividends in terms of design-ins.

I think that will still play out for the next year-and-a-half or so, where the complexity will drive us this way. Over time, you know, the benefits we bring in software in terms of the -- adding features, you know, a good example, just the immersion announcement we made in this press release where it’s another capability that because we have a programmable solution, they can now add that [inaudible] capability on a touch device that’s programmable, and now gives that [inaudible] in the same location as the touch but also improves the performance of [inaudible]. It’s not just run by a different processor. Again, that is another key thing and as we continue to add those kinds of features, it makes it harder and harder for other people to get designed in. That’s key to the strategy.

T. J. Rodgers

On your specific question of module versus chip, in the beginning you have a strange new thing like a touch screen and all you want to do is get in the market and have your touch screen be competitive, you are tempted to go to a module. What happens though is very shortly thereafter with cell phone manufacturers, you want to disaggregate the supply chain. You do not want to be paying a module manufacturer mark-up for an LCD screen, for example, you could buy yourself probably cheaper than the module manufacturer could.

So we’ve focused on what we do, which is silicon, and getting that right and partnering in the module side as opposed to trying to make modules.

Equinix should gain momentum in second half of 2009, says Jefferies

from theflyonthewall:

>>Equinix should gain momentum in second half of 2009, says Jefferies

Jefferies expects Equinix to gain momentum in the second half of 2009 due to improving fundamentals and raised its price target on the stock to $95 from $85. The firm maintains a Buy rating on shares. :theflyonthewall.com

Internap Network Services Corporation (NASDAQ: INAP) rated Underperform with price target $2.50 by Jefferies & Co.

Equinix, Inc. (NASDAQ: EQIX) rated Buy with price target $95 by Jefferies & Co.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Google Slashes CapEx Even Further

from Data Center Knowledge, an interesting comment about Google and its data center expansion:

>>Google Slashes CapEx Even Further

Google (GOOG) spent just $139 million on its data centers in the second quarter of 2009, as it further squeezed capital spending that was already at historic lows.

Here’s a look at the recent trend:

google-capex-2q-2009

1Q 2006: $345 million
2Q 2006: $699 million
3Q 2006: $492 million
4Q 2006: $367 million
1Q 2007: $597 million
2Q 2007: $575 million
3Q 2007: $553 million

4Q 2007: $678 million
1Q 2008: $842 million
2Q 2008: $698 million
3Q 2008: $452 million
4Q 2008:$368 million
1Q 2009: $263 million
2Q 2009: $139 million

New Vibrations: Immersion Adds Rich Feel to Symbian

HT to cellodude on the IV MB. From allaboutsymbian.com:

>>New Vibrations: Immersion Adds Rich Feel to Symbian

The Vibra API on Symbian smartphones has enabled developers to add ‘feel’ to applications for some time. However, a new generation of haptic feedback is being brought to the Symbian ecosystem by Immersion Corporation. This article explores the possibilities that may be offered by Immersion’s API and tools.

...

The fact that haptic feedback is best if intermittent reduces the likely demands on a device’s battery. “Even where there is intense feedback the impact on power consumption is small,” says Dennis. Immersion has undertaken extensive modelling of feedback use and this suggests the most extreme case of normal use is typing. “Even if someone manages to type at 50 words a minute the impact on battery life is negligible,” says Dennis. “In this situation the haptic effects may add one or two percent to the power consumption. Most tasks with intense haptic feedback happen when the screen is on, and the screen has a far more significant effect on power consumption.” Dennis also points out that compared to using the standard vibration APIs, Immersion's technology is significantly more power efficient. “A typical native vibration API results in the motor starting up and shutting down slowly. This means the vibrator has to be run for a significant period of time, tens of milli seconds, to have enough force behind it to achieve the desired effect,” says Dennis. “Our technology is designed to accelerate and brake the motor much faster and therefore uses much less power."

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Equinix 2Q 2009 earnings forecast

Equinix (EQIX) will be reporting 2Q 2009 results on Wednesday, July 22^nd.

Company's guidance forecasts revenues in the range of $ 206 to $ 210 million (with analysts' consensus at $ 208,8 million), while EBITDA is expected between $92 and $ 94 million. Cash gross margins should be between 63% and 64%, according to Equinix, while CAPEX should range between $ 110 and $ 120 million, including about $ 20 million of ongoing CAPEX – more about Equinix expansion projects later on.

Analysts are also forecasting EPS of $ 0.33, with a wide range in their estimates (from $ 0.25 to $ 0.53 per share). No guidance has been issued by the Company.

Churn is expected to be at the top of the 2% range (per quarter) forecasted for 2009, as Equinix is expected to lose a large customer who had taken, in the past, a “wholesale” deal in one of its Silicon Valley data centers (about 600 cabinets that will be returned to the Company). In the long term, Equinix will most probably be able to re-price this inventory at about twice the price, but in the short term it might impact the number of net cabinets added in the 2Q and 3Q 2009.

Since the last conference call, the Company issued $373.75 million of convertible subordinated notes due 2016, and announced expansions in Zurich and Chicago downtown, adding, respectively, approximately 500 and 600 cabinet equivalents. The new Chicago CH4 IBX will introduce a new service (shared suite data center offering) that will complete the Equinix Financial eXchange model.

It is interesting to note that most of the P/R issued recently are related to customers' win in the financial vertical (such as Intel in London, the International Securities Exchange (ISE), the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and the Boston Options Exchange (BOX) in New York, or Chi-X Europe Ltd in Frankfurt), and we expect some solid growth in this area, going forward.

Unlike recently, the Company should not experience a negative impact from currency fluctuations, but probably a neutral to slightly positive one, especially from its UK and Australian subsidiaries (as a reminder, Equinix gets about 35% of its revenues in foreign currencies).

While we expect another good quarter from the Company, we believe that Equinix will enjoy a better growth rate in the second half of the year, partially due to new inventory coming on-line, and we mainly look, in the 2Q 2009, for a confirmation of some positive trends and metrics:

Interconnection business

After the Company repriced some ports on the common switch (GigE Exchange), we believe that more customers will be inclined to upgrade to 10 Gig port (with also a positive financial impact on this margin-rich part of the business), and that traffic will continue growing on this platform, thus consolidating Equinix leadership in the interconnection business in the USA. This is a chart, taken from the Equinix web site, confirming the positive trend of the traffic being exchanged in the USA on this particular service (but not an indication of overall traffic, as most is still exchanged through private cross connects):

Asia has shown a strong growth trend in this side of the business, which we expect to be confirmed in this quarter and going forward, while we expect that Europe will be slower to show signs of improvement, due to the different business model (also caused by the presence of no-profit regional interconnection centers in this market) and the fact that Equinix will need to postpone, like in Paris, the monthly recurring charge for these services to a later stage, while building a critical mass of participants.

Customers addition

Equinix added in-between 110 and 178 gross customers per quarter, in the last few quarters. While the Company receives most of its additional business (about 80%) from existing customers, and this gross number can not be an indication of the quality and potential of the added customer, it is useful to note that the total number of customers has always been growing steadily, as the business model has been able to attract new participants:

MRR (monthly recurring revenue) per customer

Since last quarter, Equinix started reporting some metrics for Europe, as well, like MRR. It's necessary to remind that the European market is different from the US and Asia for at least a couple of aspects. We mentioned the approach toward interconnection and the presence of no-profit organization, it's useful to underline that the business model is also different in the way power is sold to the customers. For this reason numbers can not really be compared, and Europe shows a lower unit number. Currency fluctuations may also impact results, which are reported in US$, for Asia and Europe.

What is important to notice is that the trend is basically very positive, both on a Q/Q and Y/Y basis, probably even exceeding expectations, a sign that pricing doesn't seem under pressure in thiskind of business (it must be noted, however, that the average new cabinet sold is often more power intensive, and this means more expensive, than the “old” existing one – so we can not assume that this is a rate of Y/Y price increase for the same cabinet configuration).

New openings

We expect the Company to be basically on schedule with the forecasted new openings for 2Q 2009 and 3Q 2009.

While announcing the new CH4 data center in Chicago, Equinix also confirmed the opening of the CH2 expansion (an additional 200 cabinets downtown), that is ahead of schedule (forecasted for 4Q 2009).

Singapore will also see the official opening of the SG2 IBX data center on July 29th-31st, on schedule in the 3Q 2009. Rumors are that Salesforce might be an anchor tenant in this location. This opening will add 700 cabinets, with room for a further capacity of 1,000 cabinets equivalents.

You may find an IBX expansion chart at this link, that will most probably be updated after earnings, with Zurich (ZH4) and Chicago (CH4), and any other expansion to be announced (we still believe that Equinix will need to add more inventory in 2010 to some locations, especially in the USA).

Lastly, the call might be an opportunity to confirm if the Company will acquire the property where the new NY4 data center is located (three year option expiring in September, with price fixed at $ 39,000,000).

Accuray patent

Image enhancement method and system for fiducial-less tracking of treatment targets

United States Patent	7,522,779
Fu , et al.	April 21, 2009

Image enhancement method and system for fiducial-less tracking of treatment targets

Abstract

A method and system are presented for enhancing one or more images of an object, so as to increase the visibility within the images of one or more structures within the object. The object may be an anatomical region of a patient, and may include one or more reference structures, for example skeletal structures or vertebral structures, and one or more treatment targets, for example tumors or lesions. An operator, for example a top-hat filter operator, selects at least a first neighborhood and a second neighborhood within the images. The operator selects within each neighborhood one or more pixels having an optimal pixel value, and eliminates the remaining pixels in these neighborhoods. When the operator is applied to the selected neighborhoods, only the pixels having the greatest pixel values remain in the selected neighborhoods, and the remaining pixels are eliminated in the selected neighborhoods. As a result, desired features can be located and enhanced in the images.

Inventors:	Fu; Dongshan (Santa Clara, CA), Kuduvalli; Gopinath (San Jose, CA)
Assignee:	*Accuray,* Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA)
Appl. No.:	10/881,208
Filed:	June 30, 2004

Accuray patent

Method and apparatus for patient loading and unloading

United States Patent	7,552,490
Saracen , et al.	June 30, 2009

Method and apparatus for patient loading and unloading

Abstract

A method and apparatus of a positioning system are described to position an upper-half of a body relative to a head-end of a couch. The positioning system may be a patient positioning system and may include a treatment couch, a leg rest coupled to the treatment couch, and a drive mechanism coupled to the leg rest. The patient positioning system may also include a treatment couch, having a base portion of a treatment couch and plurality of detachable portions of the treatment couch. The plurality of detachable portions to adjust a height of the treatment couch to accommodate differing heights of patients.

Inventors:	Saracen; Michael J. (Oakland, CA), Carrano; Aaron W. (San Jose, CA), Allison; John W. (Los Altos, CA), Kuduvalli; Gopinath R. (San Jose, CA)
Assignee:	*Accuray* Incorporated (Sunnyvale, CA)
Appl. No.:	11/339,717
Filed:	January 24, 2006

Internap patents

Method and system for directing requests for content to a content server based on network performance

United States Patent	7,555,542
Ayers , et al.	June 30, 2009

Method and system for directing requests for content to a content server based on network performance

Abstract

A method and system for pointing a Internet user requesting access to content on a particular web site to one of a plurality of content servers associated with that web site based on one or more cost measurements associated with serving said content. The identification of the web site is mapped to the content servers associated with that web site. The user's IP address is then mapped to a particular content server based on a cost function and the IP address of the selected content server is provided to the user.

Inventors:	Ayers; Matt (Seattle, WA), Black; Benjamin J. (Seattle, WA), Brown; Chris (Issaquah, WA), Carlson; John (Seattle, WA), Cohn; Dan (Prairie Village, KS), Laird; Scott (Bothell, WA), Miller; Jonathan (Seattle, WA), Ramsey; Stephen (Seattle, WA), Ronen; Ophir (Seattle, WA), Schachter; Paul (Seattle, WA), Stiffelman; Oscar (Seattle, WA)
Assignee:	*Internap* Network Services Corporation (Atlanta, GA)
Appl. No.:	09/575,839
Filed:	May 22, 2000

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Passive route control of data networks

United States Patent	7,561,517
Klinker , et al.	July 14, 2009

Passive route control of data networks

Abstract

A system and a method for controlling routing of data over multiple networks. Accordingly, a system and method are provided for routing data between a first point and a second point. The method comprises passively monitoring at least one data flow characteristic associated with a data flow on a first path, comparing the at least one data flow characteristic, associated with the data flow on the first path, to an associated data flow requirement of a policy, switching the data flow to a second path if the at least one data flow requirement is not met, passively monitoring at least one data flow characteristic associated with the data flow on the second path, and comparing the at least one data flow characteristic associated with the data flow on the second path with the associated data flow requirement of the policy.

Inventors:	Klinker; James Eric (San Jose, CA), McCanne; Steven R. (Berkeley, CA)
Assignee:	*Internap* Network Services Corporation (Atlanta, GA)
Appl. No.:	10/283,798
Filed:	October 29, 2002