Excite At Home Rises on Speculation Yahoo May Buy It (Update1)
Bloomberg News
August 3, 1999, 7:10 a.m. PT
Excite At Home Rises on Speculation Yahoo May Buy It (Update1)
(Updates stock activity. Adds analyst comment.)
Redwood City, California, Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Shares of
Excite At Home Corp., which provides high-speed Internet access
through cable-TV lines, surged as much as 13 percent on
speculation Yahoo! Inc. may buy it for more than $17 billion.
Yahoo, the No. 1 Internet search service, is in preliminary
talks to buy Excite At Home, Business Week reported in its online
edition. Excite At Home shares rose 4 13/16 to 47 3/4 in early
trading of 6.8 million, making it the most active U.S. stock.
Earlier it touched 49.
Excite At Home said two weeks ago that it was in talks with
Yahoo, Microsoft Corp., America Online Inc., Walt Disney Co. and
Infoseek Corp. It declined to say what the talks were about or
whether there would be a transaction. Excite said it wanted to
quash speculation that other companies are bypassing Excite At
Home to have discussions with AT&T Corp., which owns a 26 percent
stake and holds nearly 58 percent of shareholder voting rights.
''Yahoo does need a broadband strategy or an (Internet
service provider) strategy going forward,'' said Gene DeRose,
chairman of Jupiter Communications Inc. ''How they compete with
AOL and Microsoft over time is very important.''
Yahoo might spin off At Home as an independent company,
although it and AT&T Corp. would retain sizable stakes, Business
Week said.
Excite At Home's service is attractive to Internet content
providers as a platform for broadband services, including super-
fast Internet access, phone service and interactive
entertainment.
Excite At Home had 620,000 subscribers as of June 30, from
460,000 subscribers in March.
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