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Technology Stocks : eBay - Superb Internet Business Model -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doug Fowler who wrote (4288)	7/26/1999 10:52:00 PM
From: Nelson Chang	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7772

I thought something smelled fishy. I listened to the call live, and apparantly got booted right at the start of the Q&A. Now you can listen to a recording, but ONLY up to the Q&A. Probably just another EBAY glitch. Then again conspiracists might say there is a cover up as EBAY was just about to be hard pressed for answers. ------------------------------------------------------------- After falling 3.2% to 104 3/8 today, eBay (EBAY:Nasdaq) shares -- according to CNBC -- traded as high as 110 1/4 and then fell to as low as 99 in after-hours activity. After the close, the online auctioneer posted earnings of 3 cents a share, excluding one-time items, in line with consensus estimates. But the firm's recent stream of bad luck on the technical front continued as the Webcast of its earnings call crashed just as the Q&A session was getting underway. Or did it? "You are invited to listen to the live broadcast of management's discussion of the results of operations," eBay's site declares. In the literal translation perhaps that meant: "You can listen to the management's spiel, but not the Q&A from analysts." eBay's public relations team was unavailable for comment, although a source at the company's external PR firm (flack fest!) said the outage was unplanned, meaning it's keeping with eBay's ongoing practice. (Low blow, especially since the outage was probably not eBay's fault.) "Just before the call went kaplooey, Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette's Jamie Keegan asked why, assuming that increased spending on technology and newly acquired businesses would be ongoing, gross profit margins would return to 80s next year from the second quarter's 77% level," TSC columnist Adam Lashinsky said. "eBay CFO Gary Bengier said spending would be heavy this year, but just as he was about to answer Keegan's pointed question about next year, the 'line' went dead."