Saudi Prince Alwaleed Laughs at Loss on $100 Mln Priceline Bet
New York, Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, sitting in his suite at New York's Plaza Hotel, watches a television report about his investments. The Saudi billionaire is grinning as the story details his fortune -- that is, however, until the subject turns to Priceline.com Inc.
Alwaleed, who lost $80 million by investing in the Internet company this year, points the remote control toward the screen.
``We should mute that,'' he says.
Alwaleed isn't grinning anymore. Instead, he's laughing. After all, says the nephew of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, he's still worth $20.7 billion.
``Sometimes a stock can get hit bad, like Priceline,'' he says with a chuckle. ``Sometimes we get it wrong.''
It's almost midnight Wednesday, and Alwaleed, 43, is still dressed in the tuxedo he wore earlier to a dinner in the hotel's grand ballroom. Over lobster tail and rack of lamb, News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch made a speech praising the prince, who owns $1.1 billion of News Corp. stock. The Arab Bankers Association of North America gave him a lifetime achievement award.
During an after-dinner chat with a dozen news reporters, Alwaleed is more happy about being the night's guest of honor than he is concerned about losses in Priceline.com, in which he invested $100 million, and which is down 94 percent this year after it said it will miss sales goals.
Thanks to investment gains in other companies -- such as Citigroup Inc., which makes up half his fortune -- this year's stock slump trimmed the value of his holdings by just 10 percent from a high of $23 billion earlier this year, he says. That compares with drops of 37 percent for the Nasdaq Composite Index and 9 percent for Standard & Poor's 500 Index from their peaks.
Dropping Investments
For Alwaleed, the losses simply mean it's time to move on. ``We don't see any further investments in the Internet,'' he says.
In fact, the prince, who describes himself as a long-term investor, has gotten out of some companies. Several that he listed among his holdings in May are missing from a similar list he provided Wednesday.
Xerox Corp. (a $129 million stake in May), AT&T Corp. ($150 million) and Daewoo Corp. ($150 million) are no longer listed. Also gone are three Internet companies in which he had invested $50 million each: DoubleClick Inc., InfoSpace Inc. and Internet Capital Group Inc.
Alwaleed didn't comment specifically on those companies, only saying he considers some of the Internet stocks as part of a trading portfolio. The Internet companies he's holding onto are America Online Inc. ($770 million), eBay Inc. ($51 million), Amazon.com Inc. ($60 million) and Priceline.com ($20 million), according to his figures.
Alwaleed says he's sticking with Priceline.com, which allows users to bid for airline tickets and other items. ``We believe we have a case for bringing them back,'' he says.
And he's had strong words for the company's founder, Jay Walker. ``The advice I gave him is `Deliver,''' Alwaleed says. ``If he does not deliver, he cannot regain confidence.''
Nov/16/2000 2:41 ET
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