For a brief moment at Wednesday's results telecast, Pacific Century CyberWorks chairman Richard Li Tzar-kai drifted into tech-babble, referring to 'bandwidth' when talking about management time. He quickly corrected himself and reverted to a sombre seriousness with the emphasis on consolidation, efficiency programmes and moderate capital expenditure.
Compared to his last public outing at a results announcement, the difference was stark. In October, a jaunty Mr Li dominated his press conference while running a conference-call hook-up with his CMGI partners. At his side was a noticeably twitchy finance director, David Prince, who seemed ill at ease with their future-world visions.
Yet on Wednesday it was a decidedly chipper Mr Prince who seemed to relish explaining an awful set of results.
Gone was talk of satellite-connected broadband and global alliances. Nobody mentioned the Internet. References to China were cursory and the Network of the World seemed a distant memory.
Growth themes were limited to developing total system and network solutions for companies. Staff productivity is the new buzz; managers are combing the property portfolio to 'realise value'.
Following the Stanford-degree debacle, sentiment surrounding the firm has never been so low. Having been wrong on the firm's prospects and with no corporate finance mandates on offer, analysts are weighing in. CyberWorks is now seen as an embattled incumbent operator, bleeding market share and facing huge organisational change issues.
