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

To: Killian who wrote (19209)	1/22/2000 7:53:00 PM
From: E. Davies	Respond to of 29970

Do you or anyone reading this feel that a ATHM/RR convergance is in the works??? It might, in a rather twisted way, be the AOL buyout everybody once wanted. You often get what you want only when you don't want it anymore. @home doesn't need RR. @home is going to be able to access TWX customers anyway. The only thing a merger would do is eliminate RR as a source of competition in @home territories. Eric

To: Killian who wrote (19209)	1/23/2000 9:44:00 PM
From: Solid	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

multichannelnews.com Kevin- I remember someone asking a while back about cablevision (They are actually not using @home in the NY Metro area, which I still do not understand) and MediaOne and how if at all this relates to the new merger. This excerpt was from an article about case on the new merged animal. If the T ownership in MediaOne shakes out, does this imply that T can then also share HBO and RR cable access with Excite? What a stew may be a cook'in! For entire article click site, the second part of the article copied below, pertinent to T/ATHM- Adding to the valuation and management-culture questions, the deal also brings together two unlikely partners -- AOL and AT&T Corp. -- which have been at loggerheads over the open-access issue for several months. Through its pending merger with MediaOne Group Inc., AT&T gains a 25.5 percent stake in Time Warner Entertainment, which includes most of Time Warner's cable assets, its Road Runner high-speed-data-service stake and such content assets as Home Box Office and the Warner Bros. studios. Although Time Warner has said the AOL merger will have no effect on TWE talks, some analysts speculated that another company may complicate the deal: Cablevision Systems Corp. According to some analysts, AT&T may be trying to wrest a greater ownership percentage in Cablevision's cable operations -- it currently owns about 33 percent -- which it could then fold into TWE in exchange for a greater percentage of that partnership. That scenario would solve two problems. It would give AOL Time Warner a stake in the cable operations of the entire New York metropolitan area, where Cablevision has 2.8 million subscribers. AT&T could also get a telephony agreement with Time Warner --which the two have been discussing since last February -- and AOL could get greater carriage. Adding to the complexity is AT&T's ownership of data-over-cable service Excite@Home Corp. and TWE's stake in competitor Road Runner. AT&T stands to gain a 32 percent interest in Road Runner -- MediaOne's interest in the service -- after its purchase of MediaOne closes later this year. Couple that with AT&T's nonvoting 58 percent stake in Excite@Home and AT&T would exert huge influence in the two prominent broadband-cable services. Although Excite@Home and Road Runner do not currently compete, they could once exclusivity agreements expire with Excite@Home, beginning in 2002. This could present a major problem for AOL, which has been vocal in the past about opening access to cable's broadband pipe. AT&T could opt out of its stake in Road Runner, but that could prove costly. MediaOne initially invested $1.5 billion in Road Runner, but that stake has appreciated greatly -- some say by as much as 10 times -- and a buyout could be prohibitive to AOL Time Warner. Although the AOL-Time Warner merger creates a formidable opponent to Excite@Home, chairman Thomas Jermoluk -- while saying the merger virtually puts an end to the open-access fight -- added that it has little effect on his business. "We have twice as many broadband subscribers as Road Runner, three times their size in North American footprint and nearly four times their size worldwide," Jermoluk said in a conference call with analysts. "Today, our broadband footprint overseas is 13 million homes, all of them under exclusive seven-year contracts," he added. "Together, AOL Time Warner's international footprint is exactly zero. As AOL Time Warner works toward regulatory approval, we will do what we have been doing all along, quarter by quarter: growing subs, service levels and customer satisfaction."