A big welcome to Sportsline (SPLN) to the DOOM INDEX (tm)
Someone mentioned SPLN as a short candidate a while back when it was trading at 22. I felt it was a little too early. The stock has now run into a brick wall in the mid 30's as a huge secondary has just been filed with insiders selling aggressively (reminiscient of USWB when it was trading at 35).
Even though sportsline is a neat site, unfortunately it has been swamped by competitors.
espn.com
for example, now receives significantly more unique viewers and "hits" than sportsline. Furthermore, CNNSI, Fox sports, The Sporting news, etc. etc. etc. have all put up excellent sites. Even the search engines such as Yahoo, Excite, etc. have sports sites. Yahoo sports alone generates significantly more traffic than Sportsline.
The company's current market cap is in excess of $660,000,000 (over 18.5 million fully-diluted shares). It has negligible revenues and is losing money at an ever-increasing rate. Sportsline is among the most grossly overvalued interent stocks in the middle of an interent stock bubble.
Another troubling thing about this company is the recent secondary coming so soon after the IPO. Note that 1/2 the shares in the secondary were sold by insiders. Also note that most of the licenses (such as Jordan, Tiger Woods, etc) were paid for with stock.
It is highly unlikely that Sportsline will generate enough revenue/earnings to justify its outrageous price over the next few years. Furthermore, the competition (such as ESPN and SI) is better capitalized and has more depth and experience in sports coverage.
SPLN should be sold or short-sold. |