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Technology Stocks : America On-Line (AOL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CGarcia who wrote (21199)	6/10/1999 12:08:00 PM
From: Jenne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 41369

Negative comments sink Net stocks Blodget: low expectations for AOL's June user growth By Emily Church and Bambi Francisco, CBS MarketWatch Last Update: 11:49 AM ET Jun 10, 1999 Internet Daily Net Headlines NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Internet stocks came under pressure Thursday after an influential sector analyst gave a negative June subscriber growth outlook for America Online, sinking shares of the bellwether stock. Today on CBS MarketWatch Bonds send stocks down Net stocks sink Japanese economy muscles higher Europe, London down after rate cut StockWatch: Kids + e-commerce = cash More top stories... CBS MarketWatch Columns Updated: 6/10/99 11:53:34 AM ET AOL (AOL: news, msgs) fell 4 3/4 to 106 1/4, up from its morning low of 101. Merrill Lynch Internet analyst Blodget told clients Thursday morning he expected subscriber growth for June to come in at "the low end of guidance range, which was 750,000-850,000." Moreover, Blodget noted that "international subscriber growth is significantly weaker than expected, perhaps partially as a result of the "free access" movement in the U.K." He didn't change his revenue or earnings per share estimates, adding that "we do not see any major catalysts for AOL's stock until the fall." Among other Internet leaders: Yahoo (YHOO: news, msgs) was off 3 11/16 to 142 11/16; Amazon.com was down 2 3/8 to 111 5/8 and EBay (EBAY: news, msgs) dropped 5 to 178. The Amex Internet Index slipped 2 percent, erasing Wednesday's gains. The Goldman Sachs Internet Index was down 2.4 percent. Yet some fund managers took the sell off in the Net stocks in stride on Thursday. "These are good times to get in," said Cern Basher who manages $1 billion fund for Provident Investment Advisors. "I couldn't care less what they do over the next two months," he said referring to the typical summer slowdown for Internet stocks. "We continue to buy them." Dutch move Equant (ENT: news, msgs) on Thursday announced the expansion of its suite of Internet protocol-based services by launching a 100-country corporate Internet-access service. The Dutch company said that the dial service allows remote employees to access the Internet and corporate intranets anywhere in the world through a single service provider. Shares slipped 1 1/4 to 87 1/4. Drive in Some 36 percent of Autobytel's traffic goes directly to Autobytel rather than arriving at the site from a portal link, Chief Executive Mark Lorimer told fund managers at the PaineWebber Growth & Technology conference in New York. See Renegade Report. The company (ABTL: news, msgs) expects to have operating margins of 15 percent to 20 percent over the next 3-5 years against its current negative 76 percent. Much of the erosion to the bottom line is due to sales and marketing costs; the company currently spends 124 percent of its revenue on sales and marketing. Autobytel expects to reduce those expenses to 40 percent to 45 percent over the next 3 to 5 years, executives said. "I'm impressed that they help dealers reduce their costs by 31 percent," said Ken Winston, portfolio manager at Standish Ayer & Wood. "And dealers make their money on selling additional services, such as financing or insurance," he said, adding that the dealers aren't therefore seeing losses by doing business at Autobytel. Its stock rose 1/4 to 20 5/8.

To: CGarcia who wrote (21199)	6/10/1999 12:12:00 PM
From: Craig A	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 41369

My concern also. I love this stock/company but any negatives will not be well received by an already nervous market. Also, with bad eco. numbers from anywhere, I'm afraid a 'flight to safety' will not include AOL. I believe this is THE stock to own for the next few years. That is based on what I have read from many analyst reports. This short term problem is wearing thin, however. A correction in this stock over a couple of days sure would have been better than this.