Just spoke with Rob Cooper, IR, ELBO.
He concurred that the IIOnline article yesterday was inaccurate because shares are still in lockup until 7/28/99 (unless Pru/underwriter authorizes, "which is unlikely" according to Rob). Shares owned by the Kim trust but also 700K between Firestone, Griffiths, and Panichello. ELBO has requested a full retraction of the article. I copied him in on my nastygram to IIOnline and recommend we all do the same. (mail to the editor @ online_edit@iionline.com, the author, Isabella, @ iingravallo@iionline.com, and rob cooper of ELBO @ rcoop@ebusa.com).
(Reference the article at iionline.com
As for recent movement (or lack thereof), Rob replied with the obligatory "we don't actively track movement in equity price." I pointed out that the stock price has fallen since they have announced another big earnings surprise, 100 new stores planned with 30 already open, a web site going gangbusters, the splitoff of EBWorld.com (including building new infrastructure around the ecommerce division), and the announced intent to make ELBO and EBworld more of a "household name." Rob didn't have an explanation for the decline.
He did confirm Firestone's statement about an upcoming annoucement that will result in increased traffic to ebworld, adding that Firestone apparently skipped two words in the script -- "content provider". Rob also confirmed that they still plan to make the announcement that Firestone alluded to within 2 wks (from now). Eat your words Dellfan.
Have a nice weekend everyone.
TJ |
