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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FR1 who wrote (11990)	7/1/1999 9:47:00 PM
From: daffydog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

OT Franz, On another thread, on April 19, you asked me to remind you in July about your plan to dump your inets on July 5 in order to save them from the post-earnings carnage that we all witnessed the last two quarters. Still planning to do this? MGG

To: FR1 who wrote (11990)	7/1/1999 11:27:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 29970

Good to hear the old Franz again. Your statements are balanced and reasoned. They lack the notable hysteria of the past. What I find interesting inside your words is that ATHM has the same configuration of expectations it did 2 years ago. It has the same concerns. All of us would have expected that the company was farther along than it has come, but none of us would have expected the price action. Well, almost none of us. Actually I was wrong too because it went up for the wrong reasons and is now floating on a bag of air. You are suggesting that Armstrong has chosen a suitably weak individual. How good is his judgement? I submit it is no better than the move to confront the people of Portland. I want a CEO who out does me, not someone who is obedient. I want a person who takes chances on lots of stuff, knows how to cut and run when the chance fails, is willing to kick sand in anyone's face, and doesn't quit, but finds a way to realize what seems impossible. Has Armstrong chosen that? That sounds confrontational, but its implementation isn't. You find you're doing a lot of kowtowing and other obsequious behavior. You have to cook a deal that you believe is better for the other side than for your company. You have to find a way to benefit others and often that means they have to be persuaded since they haven't a clue what's in their best interest. Since making an argument which is strongly in their interest is suspect, their knee jerk reaction is one of distrust, so you have to find a way to trick them into their own best interest. The point is that that is how synergies are created. I don't find Bell, Jermo, or Armstrong, anywhere near this level of management comprehension. The first rule of business by their rule book is never to confront. Find a way to deliver what they think they want in the way you want to give it to them. Never give the public what they want, because you define what they want, so if you take the MSFT tack of giving them everything, it turns into a nightmare at every level. This is precisely what Armstrong's T and whimping boy Jermo's AT is doing. They say, "we can only give it to you in the way we want, otherwise, it isn't profitable". But isn't that what I was recommending above? The difference is execution. How you give it to them and how you give it to AOL. When you're on top you have the advantage and the freedom to execute deftly. These CEOs are squandering that advantage.