STOCKS TO WATCH: Global Crossing, Ask Jeeves, Novellus, Applied Micro, Quantum DLT

GLobal Crossing announced a 1.0 billion pound ($1.65 billion) takeover of Britain's Racal Telecom(quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: RCAL.L), said on Monday the deal would marginally boost its earnings in 2000 and raise them by more than 10 percent the following year.

Thomas Casey vice chairman of Global Crossing, said the transaction would be financed with $500 million from its own reserves and from a $1.5 billion commitment from U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs.

The acquisition, announced Monday, gives Global Crossing a major presence in Europe. Global Crossing, which recently bought U.S. local and long-distance operator Frontier Corp., is building international undersea and land-based networks for Internet traffic.

Microsoft is adopting a service from Ask Jeeves Inc. to answer also been offering a variation of its service that other companies can use on their own Web sites, and has customers that include Dell Computer Inc.

Microsoft, which has been testing the service over the summer, will announce the deal Monday, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The maker of equipment for chip manufacturing is scheduled to report third quarter earnings. First Call's survey of 22 analysts predicts a profit of 46 cents per share. Investors could be looking for an upside surprise, given the strong positive sentiment throughout the semiconductor capital equipment industry.

Only question is, will expectations be too high? Last quarter, Novellus reported profits in line with estimates and a strong outlook, yet the market was still disappointed.

This manufacturer of network chips got steamrolled Friday after another producer of communications silicon, Hi/fn, warned of weakness in the December quarter. Applied Micro has a chance to provide its own take when it reports second quarter results today. The published consensus estimate calls for a profit of 13 cents per share, according to First Call, but sector observers really want to know what kind of outlook Applied Micro sees for the December quarter.

Friday's market also took Hi/fn's news as reason to pound Quantum's tape storage division, since Quantum was one of the suppliers blamed by Hi/fn for its shortfall. After market close, Quantum DLT confirmed the bad news; the company sees a flat December quarter, but analysts had expected an increase.>