Out of most of HRCT this AM at .75. May re-enter at .6 or below.
Waiting for SCKT to add at 1.00.
CHML, how does this look on L2? Averaged to 3.5 last week and not sure whether to take profit or hold.
Missed VLDC this AM, forgot about it from Friday.
XSNI bought a bunch last week on sale, good article on the Freeserve IPO this AM. XSNI's valuation looks like a bargain compared to Freeserve. Here's the article from Bloomberg.
Dixons to Sell 18 Percent of Freeserve Next Month (Repeat)
(Adding dropped word in 2nd paragraph.)
London, June 28 (Bloomberg) -- Dixons Group Plc said it will
sell as much as 18 percent of Freeserve, Britain's largest online
service provider, to capitalize on investor enthusiasm for Web
companies in the biggest offering of an Internet stock in Europe.
Freeserve, a free service that has a third of the U.K.'s
Internet access market, is valued between $800 million and $3.2
billion by analysts. It will sell shares next month on the London
Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. The price range will be announced July
12; the subscription period ends July 26.
Analysts' estimates vary because Freeserve spans a range of
business models. Some liken it to America Online Inc., the
world's largest Internet provider, but unlike AOL, Freeserve
doesn't charges user fees. Others compare it to Yahoo! Inc. as
both provide a directory of online services. While both generate
revenue from advertising and transactions, only Freeserve gets a
portion of the money from phone calls to dial into its service.
''The timing and incentives are in the right place,'' said
Steve Woolf, an analyst at Paribas Capital Markets. ''There is
lots of investor interest in Internet stocks and the restricted
amount of shares will attract a healthy level of demand.''
Freeserve reported a net loss of 1.04 million pounds ($1.65
million) on sales of 2.73 million pounds in the seven months to
April and does not anticipate profit in its first year to
September. It is spending to attract users and build market share
to generate revenue from advertising and sales of goods and
services in the future. It is the U.K.'s third-most visited site.
Priority Rights
Dixons, the U.K.'s biggest electronics retailer, will give
priority rights to Freeserve users who register for its service
by July 9. Retail investor interest, which has helped drive up
the price of many Internet stocks in the U.S., may boost
Freeserve's valuation.
''It's free advertising,'' Woolf said. ''There are many who
just want a piece of the Internet action. They'll now have to go
to the Freeserve Web site to buy shares.''
Selling priority shares would let Freeserve identify its
users, gather information about them and potentially bill them
for transactions. This would help it generate revenue from the
trading of goods and services on the Internet, a market that
Forrester Research Inc. expects will grow to $13 billion in the
U.K. by 2001 from $260 million last year.
''As an independent quoted company, Freeserve will have
greater flexibility in pursuing its strategy in the rapidly
growing and evolving Internet sector,'' said Sir Stanley Kalms,
Dixons' chairman, in a statement.
Acquisitions Planned
The London-based company said it will use the money raised
for Freeserve to advertise and build content, as well as make
acquisitions and investments. It has already bought a 13 percent
stake in GlobalNet Financial.com Inc. which provides financial
information on its site, and invested $10 million in TelePost
Holding SA for messaging and conferencing services.
In the four weeks to May 29, Freeserve's Web site received
about 64 million page views, of which 28 million related to sites
provided by content providers.
Energis Plc, which provides the telecommunications
infrastructure for its 1.25 million users, will buy as much as a
3.75 percent stake in the Dixons unit. It will first buy 2
percent, which it cannot sell for 18 months. It will buy the
remaining 1.75 percent over four years.
London-based Energis, which is Britain's largest Internet
traffic carrier, received between 30 percent and 60 percent of
the money spent by users to dial into Freeserve, a portion of
which was passed onto Freeserve.
Users spend between 1 pence and 4 pence per minute on local
phone calls. In the seven months to April, more than half of
Freeserve's revenue came from its share of the phone tariff.
By the end of the year however, Freeserve expects the
biggest source of revenue to be Internet commerce.
Credit Suisse First Boston and Cazenove & Co. are managing
the share sale worldwide.
Dixons shares, which have tripled since it started Freeserve
last September, rose as much as 25 pence, or 2 percent, to 1225p.
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