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Strategies & Market Trends : Telebras (TBH) & Brazil -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Art Baeckel who wrote (21161)	7/26/2000 7:31:28 AM
From: Art Baeckel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22640

StarMedia says still strong despite big players Reuters Company News - July 25, 2000 19:53 Copyright 2000 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. By Carlos A. DeJuana BUENOS AIRES, July 25 (Reuters) - The head of online media company StarMedia Network Inc. rejected Tuesday speculation that the arrival of big name players into Latin America's Internet market may push the company aside. Although StarMedia was one of the first firms to aggressively launch a Web portal aimed at the fast-growing Spanish- and Portuguese-language markets, the arrival of heavyweight players like America Online Inc. , Yahoo! Inc. and Terra Networks SA has raised questions of whether a start-up like StarMedia can duke it out. But StarMedia Chief Executive Fernando Espuelas reiterated that the company is well positioned as a market leader defined by audience and revenues. Espuelas told reporters he was confident of the company's financial situation and said there was more to winning in a market than deep pockets. "Yahoo! did not win the U.S. market because it had more money than Time Warner or Disney, or anyone else. It won because it got there first, it created the biggest audience and was able to execute its strategy well," he said at a luncheon. Espuelas said a lack of uniformity in measuring Internet traffic has helped skew the market's perception. StarMedia's page views soared 1,500 percent to 2.1 billion in the first quarter of the year and Espuelas said those figures were audited by ABC Interactive, which also audits figures for companies like AOL and Yahoo!. Rival online media companies Terra Networks, of Spain, and Brazil's Universo Online (UOL) have both claimed to be the leading Internet player in Latin America. "If there were clarity, then it would be obvious that we are the giant," he said. StarMedia is expected to report its second-quarter earnings Aug. 7. Espuelas told Reuters in Sao Paulo Monday that the company would report its best quarter ever on the back of healthy subscriber and revenue growth. The company posted a first-quarter net loss of $35.1 million and revenues jumped more than five-fold to $10.1 million over the same three months a year ago. StarMedia expects to break even in the fourth quarter of 2002.