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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Apollo who wrote (14972)	1/12/2000 5:26:00 AM
From: Apollo	Respond to of 54805

EXDS news....EXDS buys KeyLabs From CBS Marketwatch....... Exodus builds out Exodus (EXDS: news, msgs) fell fractionally to 103 after bucking the bearish trend for most of the session. The Web-hosting and Net infrastructure provider is building up its stable of value-added services. It's buying KeyLabs for $43.5 million in stock, a professional services firm. The deal is part of Exodus' strategy to develop a "superlab" where customers can test out their e-commerce offerings. See related story. Exodus Chief Executive Ellen Hancock told CBS.MarketWatch.com that there's more to come as the company seeks to build out its services in the site-performance and content-distribution space. Content distribution is an area where Exodus would compete with the likes of Akamai (AKAM: news, msgs) and Digital Island (ISLD: news, msgs). But those services are just a small part of the Exodus soup-to-nuts package. The continued expansion into professional services reflects the "maturation of the Web," Hancock said. Now companies are focusing on "testing for scale, performance, and using firewalls to secure access," she said. "We help architect the site, configure it, test it, measure performance and we provide tape back-up to quickly restore lost data." Hancock's ability to keep the Santa Clara, Calif.-based firm ahead of the curve has given investors the confidence to drive the company's stock up 2,112 percent last year, bringing Exodus' market cap to $18 billion. Currently, Exodus derives one-third of its sales from Web hosting, a third from Net bandwidth and a third from managed services, which include consulting and content distribution and other value-added services. Exodus now has 450 consultants, Hancock added. While managed services is an increasingly significant part of the Exodus lineup, the company plans to roll out 15 data centers this year, of which half will be in Europe and Asia, according to Hancock. Asked whether Exodus is comfortable with the amount of cash spent to set up data centers, Hancock noted that the company did raise $1 billion last month through a high-yield offering. Analysts also project that Exodus will turn cash-flow positive in the first quarter of this year. As to the market share Exodus commands, Hancock pointed to the 100 top Web sites, saying that 36 to 40 percent of those are Exodus clients. Industry observers have pegged our market share to be "at least in the 25 percent range for Web hosting," said Hancock. At a time when the lines between Web hosting, the Net bandwidth business and value-added services are blurring, Exodus appears to be facing competition on many fronts. Exodus considers Global Crossing its biggest competitor. Exodus reports fourth-quarter results in two weeks.