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

To: tom offenbach who wrote (13786)	8/9/1999 2:27:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 29970

Your profile says that you work at home and that you have posted once, today, though you have been a member before ATHM became public. I can't really believe my own comments over the years that people who work for a company know least about it culminating with the CEO. I am astonished by your comments. They sound as though they were extracted from the prospectus. ATHM has built regional datacenters(RDC's) in the MSO facilities. We have discussed this over the years. This is an element of distribution. ATHM needs to wean itself away from overt dependence on MSOs and physical network, because in the final or intermediate AOL-Att analysis, open access is a lock. Ask the RBOCs how valuable is the plant. It returns something like 2%. This is ATHM shareholders trump card because overtime, access revenues will diminish while service revs from application enabling, servicing and support will grow. This is MBA bilge. It isn't even true. What is application enabling? Service and support? They aren't profit centers and they belong under the purview of the MSO. Where is the margin in this "trump card"? It doesn't add value, but it is very vulnerable to technological obsolescence. Service and support is a pure loss. How do you earn money doing that? Supporting the big push into @Media? I don't doubt T wants to get rid of the XCIT properties. They'll probably 'trade/sell' the XCIT portal to AOL, do the same with World Net service and refocus ATHM into a facilities provider that services both ISP's and telcos. Sell XCIT to AOL!? You gotta be kiddin' me. Are we on the same planet? What makes you think AOL wants it if neither Att nor ATHM does? It was a fool move by a fool CEO in the first place which has practically ruined the company. Between Jermo and Att you have a real mess. Think about it from a risk management perspective on the part of T. The open access issue will keep downward pressure on both T and ATHM. Is this what you guys believe? You're really disappointing me because that's how stupid I've been saying you guys are. What keeps downward pressure on the company's stock is Att and Jermo. By making ATHM a facilities provider that facilitates last mile connectivity for other ISP's, they've overcome the open access issue and in the process unloaded a large liability(XCIT expenses) while opening the door to supplying AOL's 18M customers with long distance and other T product. We discussed this many months ago in great detail. It's the ISP of ISPs concept. The problem is that it has diminishing returns to scale. That means it isn't value add. That means that such a strategy would make the company only a cash cow like a utility. How does that hope to compete with HSAC and others coming on stream? How does that keep the exclusivity agreements? How does that get around the Portland problem? But the corker is "unloaded a large liability(XCIT expenses) while opening the door to supplying AOL's 18M customers with long distance and other T product." Then you agree that the XCIT purchase was a disaster. You must not still be working there. It would get back to Jermo and your head would roll. The only possibility is that today's newspaper hint and your post are intentionally being planted to spread the word. It implies that XCIT is gone. It's a done deal. Hallelujah. Definitions? If you want to know about the company read this thread.