A quintupling of subs is, I think, not a reasonable prospect.
I saw this one coming. Just because G* started off horribly in 2Q (10,000 subs) doesn't mean that we should cut them slack and let them work off 10,000 as a base for percentage comparisons. Absolute numbers are what matter. We need to get up to 1 million subs by YE01 (or so). To do that, G* needs to ramp up to adding 30,000 - 50,000 PER MONTH quickly (with subsequent increases in monthly add).
Only having 25,000 subs after almost a year / 6 months (depending how you slice it) of being operational is very, very bad. It's worse than I* did (I know that G* is a superior system with many other applications, but the fact remains that I* had more subs after 6 months). Please don't try to fool yourself into thinking that even 50,000 subs would be a "good job" by G*, it's still a disappointment (one that's factored into the price of the stock, albeit).
Please give me a time line on how G* will get to 1 million subs to breakeven (which assumes a dramatic increase in average MOU per sub). Here's how I see G* having to do it, and I don't see how G* can get its ducks in a row to do it.
2Q01 - 10,000
3Q01 - 40,000 (I'm being very generous) (30,000 subs added)
4Q01 - [100,000] (60,000 subs added)
1Q01 - [220,000] (120,000 subs added)
2Q01 - [400,000] (180,000 subs added)
3Q01 - [650,000] (250,000 subs added)
4Q01 - 1 million (350,000 subs added)
Is this viable (that's a real question)? Or is it that data will add so much incremental income that the subs don't need to be so high? |
