Yahoo has 2/1, but it's most likely likely the wrong date!
I usually call the company to get the right info, but haven't done it yet.
From today: Business-to-business e-commerce company incubator Internet Capital Group (Nasdaq: ICGE) tacked on $11 5/8 to $150 3/8 after Bloomberg News reported that CEO Walter Buckley told a conference today that the company plans to at least double its investments to $1.2 billion this year from $600 million in 1999.
This is what seems to be more important in a VC company than earnings. The value of their assets, the companies they hold. And how many of their holdings do IPOs. They don;t really have earnings, just portfolios or assets. From what I remember of the last earnings conference call, this is what seemed to be of the most importance. And VERT's move had to have helped this quarter.
Here's an interesting article from the Street.com today.
ICG and FreeMarkets: Why You Gotta Have Mo'
By Adam Lashinsky
Silicon Valley Columnist
1/19/00 7:00 AM ET
Who's Got It...
The saga of Internet Capital Group (ICGE:Nasdaq - news) and FreeMarkets (FMKT:Nasdaq - news) has become a tale of two stocks.
Both find themselves in the sweet spot of the craze for Internet companies that transact business among businesses rather than with consumers. Both have rapidly growing -- albeit unprofitable -- businesses with impressive management teams. Both had explosive initial public offerings in 1999. And both Internet Capital and FreeMarkets are wildly overvalued by any traditional stock-market measuring stick.
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ICG is worth roughly 10 times the identifiable assets in its portfolio, and FreeMarkets trades for 300 times its trailing four quarters of reported revenue. In comparison, investors are paying about $18 for every dollar of historical revenue of Oracle (ORCL:Nasdaq - news), shares of which hit a near record of 114 1/2 Tuesday.
And yet, these two highfliers are moving in opposite directions. ICG -- buffeted last week by the inevitable, incisive and insightful negative write-up in Barron's -- is holding steady and gained 5 3/4, or 4%, to 139 1/4 Tuesday on absolutely no news. FreeMarkets, whose stock has been plunging since its second-largest customer, General Motors (GM:NYSE - news), announced that it would stop using the FreeMarkets reverse auction service. FreeMarkets shares fell 26 3/4, or 13%, Tuesday to 171 1/4, again apparently without a hint of new developments.
This is a classic example of one company whose story has momentum and another who's clearly losing it.
Take Internet Capital first. Not for nothing have professional traders started referring to this company as "I see GE," a play on its ticker and its investor, partner and competitor, General Electric (GE:NYSE - news). By owning pieces in a variety of "market makers" -- companies that maintain an electronic market for mundane goods like plastics or livestock -- ICG sees itself as a next-generation General Electric. Or better.
"We're not manufacturers of anything," boasts Ken Fox, the 29-year-old co-founder of ICG and a managing director in the firm's San Francisco office. "Ours is a next-generation model." To wit, ICG owns the transactions, not the hard assets.
Fox, who interrupts an interview to take a call from a Fortune 50 CEO whose name you'd know, says that through investments in companies like Commerx (plastics), Bidcom (construction) and MetalSite (steel), ICG now has positions in 27 of the 50 global commercial markets in which it intends to play.
But what about the valuation of more than $35 billion for no profits and just a handful of companies with recognizable value? That's simply a leap of faith. There is the fact that two ICG companies -- Universal Access and eMerge Interactive -- are in registration to go public. And Fox says 12 more with real revenues are being positioned for IPOs in the near future.
Therein lies the cynical reason why -- as long as the market for IPOs stays hot, so too will ICG's stock -- at least relatively speaking: With scores of IPOs on the horizon, no investment bank will stand up and challenge ICG's story, thus kissing goodbye the opportunity to underwrite the IPOs of its portfolio companies.
...And Who Doesn't
And then there's FreeMarkets, an equally impressive company. Pittsburgh-based FreeMarkets runs industry-specific reverse auctions whereby buyers bid on industrial projects at successively lower prices. The company's innovation is to represent only the buyer, who pays for the auction. Unlike competitor Commerce One (CMRC:Nasdaq - news), which collects money from both buyers and sellers.
"In the B2B sector, if you're selling to big businesses, and if you give away something for free, you get a really low-level buyer," says Glen Meakem, FreeMarkets' 35-year-old founder and CEO, during a recent meeting in London.
FreeMarkets attracted plenty of attention in December, when it offered shares to institutional investors at 48 that later closed their first day at 280. Attracted by the B2B glow and investors like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Dell's (DELL:Nasdaq - news) venture arm, the public gobbled up shares of FreeMarkets.
That changed on Jan. 4, the same day analysts for the company's underwriters began their coverage, when FreeMarkets announced that General Motors was bolting. Now the stock is in free fall (down about 50%), shareholder suits are piling up alleging that FreeMarkets knew more than it said about GM and FreeMarkets is sagging while competitors rise. For example, as its shares fell Tuesday, shares of procurement software seller Ariba (ARBA:Nasdaq - news) jumped 4% and Commerce One added another 8%.
Is there anything wrong with FreeMarkets? Despite the loss of GM, probably not. Right now, it just doesn't have momentum. Any number of things could juice up the stock again, like a major customer announcement or the disclosure of an impressive fourth quarter. Analyst Jamie Friedman at FreeMarkets underwriter Goldman Sachs is expecting the latter. Still, the investment bank gives FreeMarkets a market outperform, its second-highest rating. After all, at 171, it's still more than a "three-bagger." That used to be considered a success.
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