Cisco’s (CSCO) latest quarter was the talk of the town, and looking at the recent PPI data on telecom equipment (switchboard and switchgear apparatus) it should be no surprise.

The next fair question for any skeptical investor, of course, is whether the best ever pricing environment means things can only get worse. To gauge the market, I looked at some recent calls from a variety of telecom equipment makers.

Cisco doesn’t seem worried.

Although competition remains robust, we believe we are gaining market share versus almost all of our major competitors in most product categories. But we also believe we are getting a larger share of our customers’ total spend on communications and IT.

(Excerpt from full CSCO conference call transcript)

Nortel (NT) isn’t raising prices, but doesn’t seem to feel pressured.

I am very pleased we’re delivering measurable progress on margins. This is evidence of our processes and productivity improvements and, but also pricing discipline. And we’re bringing value with a great level of discussions. We’re improving productivity. Obviously we’re not increasing prices but there is a disciplined process and I think we’re demonstrating we’re able to deliver strong.

(Excerpt from full NT conference call transcript)

Juniper (JNPR), however, voiced some concern over competitors with “nothing but price to offer.”

Certainly demand is — as long as people continue to value their networks equal to or beyond what they have, which we believe they are, and then on top of that, they use them more than they did before. Every time something like the iPhone comes out, making it easier to put YouTube videos up and for people that demand higher bandwidth applications, that only adds to the demand curve. So there’s a lot of innovation going on in that space and all of it makes positive contribution to the infrastructure market.

Pricing is at it has always been — it’s always a challenge in a given case and clearly some of our competitors have nothing but price to offer. So we’re aware of that but I wouldn’t say that’s changed in the last couple of years, so probably not a big difference that I would note.

I do think what people can most easily judge the success of the company by is do we continue to gain in the markets that we serve? Do we continue to gain the market share and continue to improve the operating model of the company in the process and continue to grow the generation of our cash and the kind of things that we think make the business healthy and healthier today than it was yesterday and healthier tomorrow than it is today, so we’ll continue to push all those metrics.

(Excerpt from full JNPR conference call transcript)

Alcatel/Lucent (ALU) is already seeing pressure.

Our Q2, 2007 gross margin suggest difficult pricing environment, one that has been impacted in the short-term and not only our need to withstand some level of collective efforts by our competitors to unseed us our customers but, as well they — need occasionally to support some product migrations. Additionally for this transition year of 2007, we are strategically reinvesting the gross margin savings in selective markets to position the company for the long-term, while achieving most of our operating expense savings on a comparable basis.

In the second quarter gross margin was negatively effected by or negatively impacted by an unfavourable product in geographic mix, continued investments as I described and the impact of some product transitions cost as customers migrate their networks.

(Excerpt from full ALU conference call transcript)

All in all, it seems like a very company-specific environment, one in which it makes sense to stick with the leaders.

The headline for the durable goods report was not very bright this morning - Durable goods orders slid 8.3 percent in Oct - Yahoo! News

New orders for U.S.-made durable goods tumbled much more than anticipated in October on a big drop in civilian aircraft but were also down unexpectedly when transportation was stripped from the total, a government report suggesting economic weakness showed on Tuesday.
Durables goods — big-ticket items expected to last three years or longer — fell 8.3 percent, the biggest drop since July 2000. The decline was propelled by a 21.7 percent fall in transportation orders, the
Commerce Department said.

But even excluding transportation orders, durables declined 1.7 percent as manufacturing, fabricated metal, and computers and electronics orders all slid.

As is our custom, however, we like to dig a little deeper into the data to determine whether there are any bright spots. Instead, what we saw for the most part was rising inventories and falling orders and shipments. All charts below are based on information provided by the U.S. Census Department and collected by Stock Market Beat.

Although last month we said it looked like it was time to play defense, even that sector is giving back much of its strength.

Also consider computers and related products. Both shipments adn orders are falling through the floor. The potential bullish case is that customers are holding off on equipment upgrades in anticipation of Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Vista. However, given the strong recent performance at Dell and Hewlett Packard (HPQ - Annual Report) this bullish case may be priced in already. That could leave investors holding a heavy bag if the Vista orders don’t come in as expected.

Communications equipment, which had formerly been bucking the trend in technology, has also seen a sharp reduction in order growth.

Semiconductors may be the bright spot, but at this point it seems too early to tell given that the one strong data point is balancing several weak ones. At the least, the strength could support the argument that slowing computer sales and orders are Vista related, and that the semiconductors will be needed to build computers in a few months.

Electrical equipment and appliances also look strong, which is probably due at least in part to strong holiday sales of flat-panel televisions.

There seem to be few places to hide.

The market being in a celebratory mood, little attention is being paid to such gloomy news as the durable goods report, which Briefing.com describes in rather bleak terms:

August durable goods new orders dropped a disappointing 0.5%.  There was nothing in the breakdown of the data to provide contrary cheer. Every key category was soft.

So, in an attempt to find the silver lining and push the market over the critical hump so we can enjoy the champagne we have had on ice since January, 2000, here are the durable goods categories that showed better growth in both shipments and new orders in August (all data sourced from US Department of Commerce, on a non-seasonally adjusted year/year basis.)

The clear winner in today’s report was Defense Capital Goods, which saw nearly a 70% rise in new orders and a 10% rise in shipments. And while the trend does nothing to help our general sense of well-being, with inventory and backlog flat and a customer with good credit quality the defense sector appears to be a good play in this environment.

The runner-up for our affections is Communications Equipment, not traditionally a defensive play but perhaps so today due to how low the sector sunk and the high credit quality of its remaining customers. Those who deride Verizon’s capital spending may not appreciate that the company is one of the last threads on which the economy hangs. At any rate, their spending appears to be lending a helping hand to the environment for comm equipment manufacturers.

In the “ehh, I guess we’ll take it” department is Transportation Equipment. New orders improved and turned positive, while shipments did just a bit better. Still, the inventory growth suggests that the industry is making too much stuff and will have to cut prices, production or both in the near future.

Finally, last but (unfortunately) not least comes Motor Vehicles and Parts.  Orders and shipments for beleaguered Detroit were both down year/year. However, they were down less than they were in July. With inventory building up further the industry may still be going to hell in a handbasket, but it will take longer to get there. That’s positive, isn’t it?

We now return to our previously scheduled celebration.

USA Today has a breathless story on US firms cutting R&D and fears that this could make the companies and the country less than competitive. While R&D are usually good uses of money, sometimes they can be taken too far. Look at all of the inventions made at Xerox’s (XRX) Palo Alto Research Center that were not commercialized until outsiders came in for a look-see. Research is no good unless it leads to development and ultimately to sales.

IBM on Wednesday plans to launch a consulting service to help businesses manage R&D efforts. It’s needed because companies increasingly must do more with smaller budgets, IBM executive Melvin Weems says.

Sounds reasonable to us, although we question whether the reduntant R&D savings will offset the consultant overhead, but that is another story. More »