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Ceragon, Alvarion, "thrive on WiMAX" - analyst

While conceding that "Shares in Ceragon, along with fellow Israeli WiMax company Alvarion, have been hit very hard during this bear market, on concerns that WiMax is more hype than a business," Street blogger Jim Cramer is delighted to report that latest earnings reports have reversed the decline.

"Ceragon proves WiMax is still alive and well," wrote Cramer, adding: "Today's earnings from Ceragon reinforce the fact that these companies continue to grow very rapidly and continue to sign deals... long term technology investors should keep an eye on this space. "

Exactly how much WiMAX revenue is in those figures, isn't immediately apparent, however. It is on the record that Ceragon has joined forces with "mobile WiMAX pioneer" Alvarion for a Danish WiMAX network - a project which will last three years, and Cramer highlighted Alvarion as another beneficiary of WiMAX promise. But that's the future.

Ceragon's own financial statements, dating back to end-June, say:

Revenues for the second quarter of 2008 were $55.2 million, up 47.9% from $37.3 million for the second quarter of 2007 and 17% from $47.2 million in the first quarter of 2008.

However, the company describes itself as "a leading provider of high-capacity Ethernet and TDM wireless backhaul solutions," and these figures provide no guidance as to how much of the growth comes from specifically WiMAX-backed sales.

Dave Mock wrote enthusiastically about Ceragon, but mentioned WiMAX only in terms of future expectations:

Ceragon also sees the WiMax partnership between Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S), Clearwire (NYSE: CLWR) and other partners such as Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) finally coming around in 2009 and potentially boosting demand for products in the United States,

as he reported for the Fool. He didn't mention Alvarion in this report. He did make the point that the 14% rise in Ceragon shares illustrated only that things were "not as bad as the market expected..."

Ira Palti, President and CEO of Ceragon, said: "Q2 revenues exceeded expectations, setting another new record. Q2 results reflected the growth in the Asia Pacific region as well as excellent demand from our OEM customers. Our book-to-bill ratio for the quarter continues to be above one, which puts us on track to grow more than 35% in 2008. We are also encouraged by the increasing interest in our IP solutions, which is building faster that we expected. We are working on numerous opportunities, including both migration to IP and new IP-based networks."

(There is a conference call recording: the replay numbers are: (800) 475-6701 or international (320) 365-3844, Access code 931228)