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Technology Stocks : IATV-ACTV Digital Convergence Software-HyperTV -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: art slott who wrote (7783)	11/13/1999 1:23:00 PM
From: mike.com	Respond to of 13157

Posted by Croatty2 on RB (my bold): THE ENABLERS Lee Masters, president-CEO of Liberty Digital, says the mix at his company is roughly 80% strategic, 20% financial. As usual with a John Malone-controlled entity, Liberty Digital drills deep to identify prospects, often looking past the sexy, high-flyers du jour to companies still in the background, the enablers. One recent example is Online Retail Partners, which helps name-brand retailers build a Web presence. While most of Liberty Digital's focus is on identifying and investing in businesses seeking to capitalize on the emerging interactive TV and e-commerce trends, “Some [investments] are purely opportunistic, purely financial,” Masters acknowledges. “We're not above making an investment just because it's going to make a lot of money.” “We happen to believe that when the Holy Grail of the digital set-top fully arrives, it turns cable into one vast intranet,” says Comcast Interactive Capital's Julian Brodsky. David Easterly, president-COO of Cox Enterprises...One new-media investment holds an honored spot in the pantheon, says Easterly, referring to @Home. “We put in $7 million. Today, that's worth about $1.7 billion. All of the cable guys did as well or better.” Excerpts from Broadcasting & Cable They put 7 million into ATHM and got back 1.7 billion. And here we have Malone putting 100 million into IATV. I think he expects a huge return on his money and I also think he's going to get it. Translation - IATV will eventually have a multi-billion dollar market cap.

To: art slott who wrote (7783)	11/15/1999 3:57:00 PM
From: Mike Fredericks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13157

Art- Thanks for the link to the CBS story on options. I think that options are a great way to reward management. We're just shareholders, but they have/had the idea and vision to get us where we are. If only ACTV execs would take options, everything would be fine. But no, they have to get compensated 2% of the increase in market cap, and that compensation comes in the form of stock or cash. Not options. If they would drop that provision and issue themselves hundreds of thousands of stock options each year at a strike price slightly below then-current market value, I'd vote for that. The execs would still be multi-billionaires, but there wouldn't be the same collar on the stock price that there is now. -Mike