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

To: deeno who wrote (20370)	3/29/2000 12:36:00 PM
From: ahhaha	Respond to of 29970

In the past I have refuted in detail all of these unsupported claims. However, I will restate: The positive for ATHM out of this announcement is that AT&T will now be in full control of the company, This is no positive, but it is necessary since management has been too poor to take the most elementary action to right the sinking ship. ATHM has suffered from "too many cooks in the kitchen", and disagreements over business strategy. This was significant a year ago, but the cooks have been somewhat silent during the interim. The company needed a strong CEO. In particular, they needed me. I stated what I would have done way back when. It would have been exactly right. All those "cooks" would have been disbarred from the kitchen. We believe that one set of management could better set and execute strategy going forward. This is non sequitur. In fact, it is incoherent. We would note that the extension of these agreements (to 2008 in AT&T?s case and 2006 in the case of Cox and Comcast) is non-exclusive. As recently as six months ago, much of ATHM?s value was in the exclusivity agreements. This is Wall Street's concept and it is wrong. Much of ATHM's value is in exclusivity? The guy is saying that the perceived goodwill has to be looked at in a certain way for the Street to price in a proper goodwill. Analysts will determine what is proper evaluation of goodwill. Exclusivity preservation is similar to Att shepherding. It is the old "monopoly is good" concept so extolled inadvertently at the universities. What do you expect from those who live by protection? Ultimately @Home will have to compete as any other ISP on the cable systems. Hmmm. They are saying that the value of exclusivity is no longer operational, so the old perception of goodwill's value is wrong. Cox and Comcast have also been given the ability to get out of their exclusivity agreements a year earlier than originally contracted (in June of 2001), which we would view negatively. No, they are saying that the old perception of goodwill is right. Our breakup value for ATHM remains $44 per share. We believe any operational upside from AT&T?s control of ATHM, (for instance the further development of @Home network business), will be obviated by ATHM?s grant of warrants for up to 100 million new shares to AT&T, Cox and Comcast, in connection with their extension of non-exclusive distribution agreements with Excite@Home.(H. Blodget/V. Syer) Since we are talking goodwill rather than meaningful earnings dilution, how can this guy reach this air head conclusion? The last clause is a dangler. It has no determinable semantic connection to the previous ones. That's the nature of this entire commentary. It's explicitly contradictory and incoherent. This guy is important. He moves markets randomly depending upon what the public lemmings are doing. He should apply for a job at ATHM.