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Technology Stocks : CMGI What is the latest news on this stock? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sunny who wrote (12437)	8/9/1999 9:45:00 AM
From: Mark Peterson CPA	Respond to of 19700

Sunny, a subscription service is available through mergerstat.com. Used to subscribe to it a year ago. Mark

To: sunny who wrote (12437)	8/9/1999 2:32:00 PM
From: Netwit	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 19700

Sunny, thanks for the hard work. It is a service to everyone one on the board. The discussion between you and Mark re control premium is interesting. Mark, it sounds like you have been involved in some company acquisitions. I did alot of acquisitions and company valuations in a previous life as well. I think that control premiums are important and they aren't. Company valuation is more an art than a science and the applicability of any particular valuation factor depends on the situation. When you buy an entire company you don't necessarily pay more than the "value" you expect to get. Look at some of the recent mergers. Many of them are using the stock price on the day that the deal is signed. At any rate, I don't think that it is a conservative practice to value CMGI with a control premium--particularly with respect to public companies, because as a shareholder I will choose to buy Engage on the open market at x rather than through CMGI at xplus control premium. Essentially, what we have is more analogous to a closed end fund, which are valued based on the public price of the underlying stocks held and then trade at a premium or discount to that amount. (Closed end funds issue stock on day 1 and unlike mutual funds do not have redemptions or issue new shares outside of a public offering environment.) And remember CMGI's recent scramble to acquire Alta Vista was motivated in part to avoid holding company tax implications. In the case of closed end funds, the premium or discount reflects more the supply and demand factors as well as hidden capital gains considerations. I do think that there is a "deal flow" value to CMGI and there is value in their venture captial holdings of non-public companies. I suspect that the best way to value them though is to determine the discount or premium that they are trading to relative to their public holdings and then compare that discount or premium to some analogous companies, like Softbank and SFE.