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Technology Stocks : Liquid Audio Inc - (Nasdaq- LQID) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: $Mogul who wrote (261)	7/20/1999 11:09:00 PM
From: SunSunM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 674

I wish MPPP would go much higher, the higher the better for LQID. Might be good idea to add some more tomorrow morning. Regards, KC.

To: $Mogul who wrote (261)	7/20/1999 11:11:00 PM
From: CanynGirl	Respond to of 674

Hmmm. Perhaps CDNW is a better sympathy play to the MPPP IPO? Analyst Raises Eyebrows at MP3.com By Aaron L. Task Senior Writer 7/20/99 9:12 PM ET After the close, MP3.com's (MPPP:Nasdaq) offering of 12.3 million shares priced at $28 per. This after underwriters -- led by Credit Suisse First Boston and Frank "Duke of the Net(?)" Quattrone -- upped the expected price to $24 to $26 today vs. $16 to $18 last week and $9 to $11 originally. (Did somebody say "inflation"?) "It's phenomenal," said Steve Harmon, senior investment analyst at Internet.com. "The interesting thing is they haven't figured out their business model. The most important thing MP3.com has is traffic centered around music [but] I don't think they can survive as a college-student free-for-all." (Having survived some, I can't tell you it ain't easy, especially on the liver.) The company will need "meaningful deals" to expand from its current offerings, mainly "garage bands" and better-known artists who have been "reamed" by the music industry, Harmon said. This will be paramount for the coming competition he foresees with other online music purveyors, notably CDNow (CDNW:Nasdaq), which recently announced it will offer downloadable music. "MP3.com is a Teflon-coated IPO, but with Sony (SNE:NYSE ADR) and Time Warner (TWX:NYSE) [on CDNow's team], MP3.com better line up some serious players on the entertainment side," the analyst said. "You have to be careful as an investor as you look at MP3.com," Harmon continued. "It's as if Amazon.com (AMZN:Nasdaq) wanted to aggregate unknown writers and sell a compilation of their stories. How exciting a business model is that? [MP3.com] hasn't been able to monetize the traffic of their artists yet." Harmon recalls asking MP3.com Chairman and CEO Michael Robertson (who owns over 25.6 million of the company's 53.3 million outstanding common shares, according to the firm's amended S-1 filing of July 14) about the company's "sell-through rate" at a recent conference. "He said 'I don't have the stats,'" Harmon recalled. "It didn't sound quite right. Anybody in business, they're checking sales every 25 minutes. Basically it sounds like there's not any sales. People don't want to buy unknown artists, it's a fundamental flaw." According to the S-1, MP3.com had net revenue of $1.1 million from March 17, 1998, through Dec. 31 and a gross profit of $947,480. Robertson could not be reached for comment but a spokesman promised to try to arrange an interview once "legal" clears it, leaving me feeling like a young Herb Greenberg (who I bet rues the day he left San Francisco for the apple in decay). Despite that and a belief naming a company after a technology is a bad idea, Harmon said MP3.com will "be one of the better-performing stocks in the aftermarket this year" and could trade north of $100 tomorrow. thestreet.com