Mon Capitain: No. When addressed by a shareholder at the AGM, Rosen made a facetious remark to the effect that he hadn't heard (or had heard) something about shareholder interest in AV. This was greeted by laughter from the audience who took it as an example of Rosen's dry wit. The issue of AV preoccupied the shareholders and was one of the straws they were clinging to after the devasting events of the first six months.
Shareholders fell into two main camps (1) those who wanted COMPAQ to retain control of AV but to distribute some shares in AV to shareholders for free or at the IPO price (2) those who thought that this would dissipate the value of the deal and that COMPAQ should float AV but hold unto all the shares so that the shares could be used in acquisitions and for leverage in future deals.
Although some of us (well, I) had discussed the possibility of selling AV outright, rather than floating it, by the time of the AGM nobody was discussing that. The assumption was it would be floated in the Fall 1999 and that one or the other of the two broad approaches described above would apply. The CMGI-AV deal, when it came, was a total surprise.
Of course it is impossible to prove how much the prospect of an AV floatation in the Fall 1999 propped up the share price, but many on the Yahoo thread, this thread and numerous media pieces referred to it as reason to be in COMPAQ. Also there was much comment about how owning a majority in AV after the floatation would enable COMPAQ to take a giant leap into the world of the internet and develop new revenue streams for the future.
It seemed crazy at the time that people were placing so much value on owning a few AV shares, but that's the market - and who is so say they would have been wrong. Owning COMPAQ was seen as a way of woning a bit of AV directly and owning a lot of it through COMPAQ's majority stake in it.
Once the AV - CMGI deal was announced - all that AV generated enthusiam for COMPAQ sagged and the share price with it. |
