CommScope punts on IPO price but with good Sox

Things are shaping up well here in Nashua, NH this fine Monday morning: the Red Sox are lighting up the World Series, the Pats ground out a gritty gridiron win yesterday, and Light Reading's Ray LeMaistre has drawn up a nifty blog analyzing the Xs and Os of how CommScope was resigned to settle for a reduced IPO price.

"CommScope's revenues were up more than 10 percent compared with the same period a year earlier, so [the company's] expected third-quarter sales represent something of a speed bump for the vendor's growth momentum and investors might have reacted to that shift," charges the piece.

The blog describes how The Carlyle Group LLC had its sights set on a higher [IPO] price than what it actually got. Monday morning quarterbacking alert: "It could be that investors weren't as keen as Carlyle had hoped on a company that's carrying $3 billion in debt," writes Light Reading's LeMaistre. "Hence the need to use the IPO proceeds to reduce that mountain."

However, much as with a certain beloved MLB baseball franchise, the blog  goes on to note how CommScope has either a stacked bullpen, or a diversely strategic offensive line-up (take your pick of cheesy metaphors).

"[The company] has a range of products well suited to a market that is centered around broadband rollouts,"  LeMaistre points out. "So it looks like a solid business that is on course to grow its full-year 2013 revenues from the $3.32 billion it generated in 2012."

Either way, whatever happens, the deal is a home-run for investors. As recorded by Light Reading, "the Carlyle Group LLC, which has owned the company since January 2011, is selling about 7.7 million shares, which should net it more than $100 million."

Full Blog:  CommScope Settles for Reduced IPO Price (lightreading.com)

Report: Contractors fight over NSA data center delays

The Wall Street Journal's Siobhan Gorman reports that "contractors working on a new National Security Agency data center in Utah are fighting over the causes and responsibility for electrical failures that have caused construction delays costing up to $50 million, project officials say."

Earlier this month, the newspaper revealed how "the NSA's Utah Data Center, which has become a symbol of the agency's potent surveillance power, has been hobbled by the electrical failures", which resulted in a heavily publicized series of fiery explosions.

"The lead contractor on the project says it has uncovered the cause of the explosions -- a defect in electrical switches provided by a subcontractor -- and is installing a fix," adds Gorman's report. However, "outside investigators from the Army Corps of Engineers, which is overseeing the $1.4 billion construction of the center, say the contractors' explanation, and proposed fix, remain unproven."

Full story:  Contractors Fight Over Delays to NSA Data Center (online.wsj.com)

Government shutdown could test IT security at federal agencies

Computerworld is reporting that a government shutdown that lasts more than a few days could test the ability of federal agencies to protect their information systems against security threats. According to a report, over the past few day several agencies, including the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Social Security Administration, have released contingency plans showing that they will have to heavily scale down their IT teams to maintain, manage and protect IT infrastructure during a a shutdown.

Full story:  Shutdown could test IT security at federal agencies (computerworld.com)

See also:  How the federal government doubled its amount of data centers in just 2 years