Alger tabs women-driven iVillage <IVIL.O>-Barron's
NEW YORK, March 29 (Reuters) - David Alger, author of
"Raging Bull" and chief executive officer of Fred Alger
Management in Manhattan, tabbed popular online women's web site
iVillage Inc. <IVIL.O> as one of several Internet stocks he
liked in an interview in this week's edition of Barron's.
After falling behind initially in terms of Internet usage,
Alger told Barron's that women have caught up. Women also make
70 percent of family purchases, Alger said.
"iVillage.com really supplies a lot of information content
across a lot of different areas," Alger told Barron's.
"Everything from child care to astrology, to relationships, to
the kinds of things you would find in women's magazines ..and
it's starting to branch out as an e-commerce company."
Alger pointed to the company's subsidiary, iBaby.com, which
sells children's products, as well as its alliance to start
selling pet food an other pet items as areas for growth.
"We think they will develop a site on health and beauty
aids, and that they'll enter the fashion arena," Alger said. "I
think it's a very exciting company. You got to believe that
this is a revolution and you want to be in on the front edge of
it."
With a market cap of $1.4 billion, ivillage is not very big
as far as Internet companies go, Alger told Barron's.
"Its 30-times our revenues estimate estimate versus 70
times for Yahoo! Inc. <YHOO.O>. We think revenues will grow 50
percent-plus a year, so the valuation could double in two
years," Alger said.
Among other Internet stocks, Alger picked Amazon.com Inc.
<AMZN.O> as well as AtHome Corp. <ATHM.O> and Broadcast.com
Inc. <BCST.O>.
"AtHome has 300,00 subscriber and is rising sharply and the
(planned) acquisition of Excite (Inc. <XCIT.O>) lets AtHome
offer not only the ability to hook up cable TV and get much
faster Internet service, but also provide its own proprietary
portal," Alger said. |
