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Strategies & Market Trends : Range Bound & Undervalued Quality Stocks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BWAC who wrote (1803)	4/13/2000 11:49:00 PM
From: Esway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5499

FTU:Apr 13, 2000 14:04 ET Warburg Dillon Reed (FTU) reit buy first qtr meets expectations, keeping an eye on asset quality, target $51

To: BWAC who wrote (1803)	4/14/2000 10:47:00 AM
From: Esway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5499

SAN FRANCISCO, Apr 14, 2000 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray Managing Director and Senior e-Finance Analyst Stephen C. Franco, today upgraded Ameritrade Holding Corporation (AMTD - $17 7/16, a) to a Strong Buy rating from a Buy. Ameritrade Holding is a pioneer in the discount and online brokerage industry, providing brokerage services and clearing services to self-directed individual consumer investors and to financial institutions through its subsidiaries. "We are upgrading Ameritrade to a Strong Buy rating from a Buy, following the company's announcement of blowout fiscal second-quarter earnings," said Franco. "The company reported revenues of $170.3 million, a 54 percent sequential increase, driven by extraordinarily strong trading volumes (149,091 trades-per-day, up 84 percent sequentially) powered by the extreme volatility in the equities markets. The company's earnings per share came in at $0.02, $0.06 ahead of our estimate. In our view, the positive earnings per share is quite remarkable due to Ameritrade's ongoing support of its OnMoney subsidiary (investment in OnMoney totaled nearly $30 million), which will likely be spun out sometime over the next six months." "The company acquired 306,000 net new accounts in the quarter, up 45 percent sequentially and easily surpassing our 185,000 estimate," said Franco. "To further underscore the magnitude of Ameritrade's account growth, it must be noted that the company added nearly as many accounts in the March quarter of 2000 as in all of 1999 combined (306,000 versus 332,000 in 1999). We believe the account growth is all the more impressive considering Ameritrade actually spent less in the March quarter on marketing than in the previous quarter." "We are setting a new $45 price target, based on 30 times estimated fiscal 2001 earnings-per-share of $1.50," said Franco. "We believe Ameritrade still has strong growth prospects and the lowest cost structure in the industry, which should drive the most profitable model for online brokers over the next 18 months." For more information, visit our Web site at www.piperjaffray.com.