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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc

ATHM 23.96

+0.6%

Nov 18 3:59 PM EST

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To: ahhaha who wrote (11979)	7/1/1999 8:23:00 PM
From: FR1	Read Replies (2) of 29970

I agree that Excite was not the best choice. TJ chose them because the buildings are within a few feet of each other, they know each other very well, and excite had a lot of hits as a web site (so it looked like a good "front end"). None of those are good business reasons. It almost seems like Armstrong, who should have known better, was real busy and just said "ok, you must know what you are doing". Maybe the other reason was that Yhoo was too expensive? Also who else was there to buy? I guess the answer to that is why pick anybody? I think ATHM will do well for many of the reasons we have stated on this thread. It is a good long term stock but it looks like a subdivision of T. Ques: Why didn't (and why doesn't) Armstrong replace TJ with a stronger and more experienced CEO? Ans: He must like it this way. I like the youthful enthusiasm of TJ and Bell, but I would feel a lot better if they made realistic statements. Enthusiasm does not get press headlines and move the stock because there is no substance to write about. I wish TJ/Bell had a year long plan and came out with one concrete product announcement every month. That's what Dell did during its growth. It just seems like we are on the PR defense and not the offense. For example, anybody can do this free PC deal. Why didn't ATHM come out with a deal like: "Buy this CPQ (or DELL or IBM) computer with built in modem for $x/month and get free ATHM service for y months." Adjust x and y to whatever you need - make deals with CPQ/DELL/IBM. Do the product announcement together - do some shared ads. These box makers do a lot of print/media ads - they would like to be associated with ultra fast web access. It's not too late - AOL has selected the garbage end of the PC makers to do this with and they don't have that much clout in print/tv media ads. Some people might say: "We have more orders than we can fill. Why should we make deals?" The reason we need to constantly make deals and get in the public's face with a positive image is because we are young and, whether we like or not, we are being branded. Because we are not out there branding ourselves, AOL is doing the branding for us. The image they are branding is Frankenstein.

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