CDNow in Mexican investor's web
cbs.marketwatch.com
By Thom Calandra, CBS MarketWatch
Last Update: 9:20 AM ET Jun 1, 1999 Also: Options Watch
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- CDNow, the Pennsylvania seller of compact discs, once again deserves a look as a takeover candidate, a government filing shows.
Mexican investor Carlos Slim Helu just increased his stake in the money-losing Internet company, which is newly merged with N2K. Slim, one of Mexico's wealthiest investors with interests in Prodigy and Mexico's version of Sears (S: news, msgs), increased his position to 6.7 percent in the open market during May, a May 27 Securities & Exchange Commission filing shows.
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Slim bought CDNow shares (CDNW: news, msgs) in the open market on Nasdaq and owns the stake with Mexico's Grupo Sanborns S.A. de C.V. and Grupo Carso S.A. de C.V. See the filing.
Slim, Telefonos de Mexico S.A. (TMX: news, msgs), Slim and Slim's Global Carso Telecom, an investment firm, own a majority of Prodigy, which trades on Nasdaq (PRGY: news, msgs). Slim, with a war chest of almost $1 billion, was busy buying stakes in pastry makers, telecommunication interests and other companies in May, as news service Reuters reported. See the article.
CDNow, looking over its shoulder as Amazon.com (AMZN: news, msgs) starts selling music and everything else under the sun, says the N2K merger will help it save $20 million this year. The combined company could see sales of as much as $170 million this year and already has been mentioned as a takeover candidate. See the story.
CDNow recorded a 128 percent surge in quarterly sales. Total sales in the recent quarter were $36.3 million vs. a combined $16.3 million in sales in the same period a year ago. The company cites a Media Metrix report that ranks CDNow as the third-most-visited e-commerce site in April.
Services such as Imagine Radio, which is owned by cable and entertainment giant Viacom (VIA: news, msgs), heavily promote CDNow. Imagine Radio, which relays radio station programming via the Web, says it will change its name soon as it doubles the size of its music library this summer. (Viacom also owns MTV, the music channel.)
One MarketWatch.com viewer, Louis Cammarosano, speculates the name change might involve CDNow. He points to Imagine Radio's Web site, where the company says it will change its name to one with only one vowel and four consonants. See the site.
"Amazon is quickly become the KMart of the Web and CDNow the MTV of the Web," says Cammarosano via electronic mail.
Let's see. One vowel. Four consonants. Nah. Couldn't be. Could it? |
