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Technology Stocks : CMGI What is the latest news on this stock? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Peterson CPA who wrote (9338)	6/7/1999 11:54:00 AM
From: Millionairess	Respond to of 19700

from briefing today - interesting speculation that dell and msft deal could be a prelude to an NAVISITE ipo filing: ... 10:30 ET****** CMGI (CMGI) 98 5/8 +4 3/8 In many ways, it is still the ultimate internet stock, because the product is internet stock. The company creates new internet companies, then spins them off into the IPO market, retaining a large chunk of the company. Then selling whatever portion of those retained shares it wants, it can essentially manufacture its own earnings statement every quarter. It is hard to think of any similar public company in recent history, and it has become the central player in new internet companies, surpassing the established venture capital companies. Today, CMGI's majority owned company, NaviSite, went a big step closer to its own IPO, by announcing investments by Microsoft and Dell. NaviSite is a web-hosting company that comes with its own ebusiness application solutions. There is now a spectrum of web hosting businesses. Digex, for example, provides the basic web hosting services, with a server and web hosting software; leasing a database on the server costs extra. Managing it is up to you. Exodus provides web hosting, with complete system administrative functions, including backup, version control, and automatic software upgrades. NaviSite offers a complete outsourced ebusiness solution, including the ecommerce engine and other applications. We haven't tested these products, or really looked "under the hood" at NaviSite, this is just a observation of how CMGI has positioned the company. Since Inktomi (INKT) is also in the complete outsourced ecommerce engine business, it will be interesting to compare the two approaches. But until the NaviSite S-1 registration comes out, all we can do is make inferences from the press releases. With that in mind, the investments by Dell and Microsoft look more like the "dressing up" that is now becoming common prior to an IPO. You get key companies to buy into your deal at reasonable, but not outrageous share prices, bringing more credibility to the deal. Yes, NaviSite becomes an all Microsoft shop running on Dell servers. But it is also likely that both companies are getting somewhat of a sweetheart deal for lending their name to the venture, and buying shares at a lower price than you will be able to, when the deal finally makes it to market. But the bulk of NaviSite will then become "inventory" of CMGI, who will sell it whenever they choose, to create "earnings."