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E-commerce forecasts too conservative, strategist says
Copyright © 1999 Nando Media
Copyright © 1999 Reuters News Service
NEW YORK (June 2, 1999 4:56 p.m. EDT nandotimes.com) - If history is any guide, current forecasts on the growth of electronic commerce will be too conservative, PaineWebber Group's stock strategist Edward Kerschner said Wednesday.
"Major technological revolutions are always bigger than anyone expects," Kerschner told a group of institutional investors. "Even the most bullish forecasts are probably conservative."
He noted that forecasts about the early growth of the automobile industry were dismissed on Wall Street as too fanciful, only to have actual production rates far exceed the most rosy projections.
"E-tailing" sales are expected to grow to $100 billion a year over the next three years from an estimated $25 billion in 1999, Kerschner's report on the investment outlook said.
Kerschner told the group that, despite the bright prospects, investing in e-commerce is far from simple. Internet businesses are easy to get into and, "being there first is not a guaranty of survival," he said.
He noted the disappearance of many personal computer companies that were leading the business in the early 1980s. By 1984, the stocks of these companies were down sharply. Today, the personal computer business is dominated by companies that did not even go public until after the boom years of 1982-83.
In 50 years, services will account for 80-85 percent of private-sector gross domestic product (GDP), compared with 72 percent now. Agriculture and mining will each account for a slim one percent of private-sector GDP.
Information is moving in the direction of becoming a free commodity, which is bearish for many traditional providers of news, sports and financial information, he said.
As for the effect of e-commerce on real estate, Kerschner said the outlook is for lower demand for retail space, but higher demand for warehouse space. The demand for office space is likely to be unchanged.
Kerschner is chairman of the investment policy committee at PaineWebber.
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