HQ Conf:ATHM CFO Strikes Back w/ Support from RoadRunner VP of Corp Dev.
Notes From Chase H&Q: Excite@Home Challenges Critics
By George Mannes and Joe Bousquin
Staff Reporters of The Street.com
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3/8/00 7:23 PM ET
thestreet.com
SNOWBIRD, Utah -- The shares of Excite@Home (ATHM:Nasdaq - news - boards) are off more than 70% from their 52-week high. But that ski slope of a stock chart didn't dampen the feistiness of CFO Ken Goldman on Wednesday morning.
In an informal Q&A with investors after Goldman's slide show, he took the offensive a little bit against America Online (AOL:NYSE - news - boards). But mostly he challenged the people who would undervalue his company, a Web portal that also is in the midst of heated competition to speed up Internet access.
"They think if open access would come overnight, we wouldn't be able to compete. And that's baloney," he said. Sure, there's high-speed cable Internet access company Road Runner, owned in part by Time Warner (TWX:NYSE - news - boards).
But AOL, with its limited digital subscriber line high-speed phone service, and Internet service providers like MindSpring (now part of EarthLink (ELNK:Nasdaq - news - boards), don't have the infrastructure or experience to compete, he suggested. "Who else is out there in broadband?" he asked. "No one. No one."
He continued, "We've all had our own operational issues. But you learn from that and move forward. The other guys haven't had their teething pains yet."
At different points in the morning, Goldman said he believed the company would exceed projections that it would add 2.5 million to 2.8 million high-speed subscriptions this year. He reiterated earlier statements that the company would be expanding into DSL access.
He called AOL's recent Capitol Hill open-access announcements "politically correct," and said they wouldn't change Road Runner's current exclusivity agreements with cable operators, nor Excite@Home's. And, in response to an investor question, he said that AT&T-owned (T:NYSE - news - boards) TCI cable systems' reported sluggishness in adding high-speed @Home subscribers was a thing of the past. "They're kicking butt," he said.
Goldman got a measure of support from rival Road Runner -- specifically, Meredith Flynn-Ripley, vice president of corporate development, who was at the conference. "People ignore the value of their respective portals and backbones when they value the companies, looking only at their carriage agreements," she said. "There is a basic misunderstanding about assets that Road Runner and @Home hold," she added.
"Everything he says about the network rings true," said a buy-sider who doesn't own any Excite@Home stock. "It ain't easy to duplicate. There's a lot of value there."
At Wednesday's close, the stock was up 2 1/16 to 30 3/4, or 7.14%. |
