Lucent, a Short favorite

No one loves Lucent Technologies, unless of course you are a short seller. This is quite a reversal from the good ole days of 1999 when people could not stop bidding up Lucent.

Right now, Lucent Technologies had 291 million shares short as of Nov. 20, the most of any company, according to Bloomberg News.

The company is expected to post a loss for third year running, about 28 cents and down from $2.95 in 2002. For next year, the consensus is that Lucent will break even. Lucent’s book value (corporate net worth per share) is negative $1.02. Revenue, $30.6 billion in fiscal 1999, was $8.5 billion in fiscal 2003, Bloomberg says.