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Technology Stocks : GBIX: an Internet leader -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: QuietWon who wrote (56)8/20/1999 12:55:00 AM
From: QuietWon  Respond to of 144
 
Article in SmartMoney & Dow Jones: item 1 of 2

August 18, 1999
Part Two: Institutional Darlings
By Paul R. La Monica

DID YOU EVER notice that film critics tend to pan most
of the movies the general public flocks to? There weren't
too many glowing reviews of the latest Star Wars
installment, but the movie has grossed more than $415
million at the box office.

Americans also seem to be ignoring the judgments of
the pros when it comes to Internet stocks. Individual
investors, it seems, can't get enough Net stocks -- even
though professional money managers, the folks whose
job is to pick stocks for diversified mutual funds, have
scorned many high-profile dot-coms.

You're not going to see Fidelity's fund managers, for
example, rushing to buy a "hot" Internet stock just
because a Wall Street brokerage firm initiated coverage
with a Strong Buy and issued an outlandish price target.
Few fund managers are willing to bet their reputations on an unproven company in a business that is
in its infancy.

That's not to say fund managers are all hopeless antediluvians who will
never embrace the Internet. Institutions have to be buying some Net
stocks, right? So what do fund managers like in this volatile and still
unfledged sector? We decided to check by screening for Internet
companies that have at least 30% institutional ownership. (The average
percentage of institutional ownership for the 6,374 stocks in the Zacks
database is about 35%.) Of the 137 Internet companies tracked by Zacks,
20 made the cut.

Missing from this list of institutional darlings are several
high-profile Internet companies. Yahoo! (YHOO) and
Amazon.com (AMZN) fell short of our 30% threshold.
Institutions own 23% of Yahoo and 26% of Amazon.
Another big-name e-commerce company, online
auctioneer eBay (EBAY), is even less admired by the
pros. Just 12% of the shares are owned by institutions.
Maybe all those site outages have scared fund
managers away.

Some Internet blue chips did make the list. Institutions
own more than half of America Online (AOL) and
Internet software company BroadVision (BVSN).
Mutual-fund managers have also taken a shine to Net
investment-holding company CMGI (CMGI) and
search-engine software developer Inktomi (INKT). But
we thought it would be interesting to take a look at some
of the lesser-known Net stocks that mutual-fund
managers have been scooping up.



To: QuietWon who wrote (56)8/20/1999 12:56:00 AM
From: QuietWon  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 144
 
Article in SmartMoney & Dow Jones: item 2 of 2

One group that seems to have attracted a lot of interest
is the Internet-hosting companies -- the outfits that help
get corporations up and running online. Janus Venture
(JAVTX), a fund that specializes in small-cap stocks, is
a big holder of three hosting companies that made our
list. Exodus Communications (EXDS), Globix (GBIX)
and Verio (VRIO). As of July 31, Globix was the fund's
fifth-largest holding. Exodus ranked ninth and Verio,
11th.

Will Bales, co-manager of Janus Venture, says all three
companies are well-positioned to take advantage of an
Internet outsourcing trend. Someone has to get
companies connected to the Internet and manage their
Web pages, and that's often something a company --
especially a non-tech firm -- isn't able to do in-house.
That's why he favors these behind-the-scenes Internet companies as opposed to sexier e-commerce
plays. It's still much too early to predict who will win out in online retailing, Bales says, with so
many sites out there for customers to choose from. "That's somewhat of a crapshoot," he says.
"But we do know that traffic is going to grow every year, so we buy companies that enable traffic to
get there."

Globix is a small company (with a market cap of just
$354 million) that focuses on Internet connectivity and
Web hosting for midsize and large companies such as
Microsoft (MSFT), RealNetworks (RNWK) and Dow
Jones (DJ) (a co-owner of this site). Exodus, a midcap
company, has a similar approach, with customers such
as eBay, Yahoo and Lycos (LCOS). The two companies
also have the highest institutional ownership on our list,
at 88% for Globix and 74% for Exodus.

Verio is more of a low-end host company; its customers
tend to be small businesses. Jim Callinan, manager of
the Robertson Stephens Emerging Growth (RSEGX)
fund likes the company because it has been an active
consolidator in a fragmented industry. Last month, for
example, Verio agreed to buy digitalNation, a privately held Web-hosting company. As of July 31,
Callinan's fund also held Globix and Exodus. Like Bales, Callinan says hosting companies are
difficult to ignore given the steady flow of new Internet traffic. "Corporate America is coming onto the
Net in droves," he says.



To: QuietWon who wrote (56)8/20/1999 12:29:00 PM
From: Edwarda  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 144
 
Dear QuietWon, in your next two postings, you have answered the very question you posed. I did not mean to imply that GBIX is an ISP; this was TOA's apparent take on the company and I simply answered his comments about ISPs in general. I do agree that there is a notable difference between an ISP and a hosting (really outsourcing) company.