Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Angels of Alchemy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kevin McKenzie who wrote (17151)	10/13/2000 9:14:30 AM
From: ColtonGang	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24256

CMG sees AltaVista Europe profit By Thom Calandra, FT MarketWatch.com Last Updated: 5:50 AM ET Oct 13, 2000 Newswatch Latest Headlines PRAGUE (FTMW) -- The head of Internet holding company CMG Information Services defended his company's streak of acquisitions and predicted a profit for its AltaVista Europe unit by December or January. Chairman and CEO David Wetherell also said his company "possibly" would look at continuing its streak of buying Internet properties, even though CMG's (CMGI: news, msgs) stock has reduced the company's market capitalization drastically. Wetherell said he even would look at properties owned by rival Internet Capital Group (ICGE: news, msgs) , whose stock also has been battered this summer and autumn. Some 55 percent of Web traffic from the search engine AltaVista comes from outside the United States, Wetherell told a group of venture capitalists and Internet executives in Prague on Friday. Acquisition slowdown Wetherell said CMG has not bought a company since March. Before that, the company had been making about two acquisitions a month. "Now, everybody wants to be bought where their equity (price) was before (the crash)," Wetherell said. CMG expects five of its six business units to be profitable by July 31 of 2001. It also has slimmed its number of subsidiaries to 15 from 42 in an effort to help Wall Street understand how the holding company's parts fit together. Wetherell said the company would be "more trackable" for Wall Street analysts. Wetherell predicted that a seven-fold increase in worldwide Internet use from now through the year 2003 would pull Internet stocks out of their slump. He said even he was surprised at the sell-off of Internet benchmarks such as Yahoo (YHOO: news, msgs) , whose stock has lost about 30 percent of its value since it reported its quarterly financial numbers Tuesday. "Yahoo had a great quarter but it grew only 9 percent (quarter over quarter)," Wetherell said. "That's pretty good for every industry except the Internet." CMG earlier this year was a stock market darling. Wetherell pitched the company as an early-stage Internet investor that would reap big returns when its holdings went public. A plunging market for Internet stocks has closed that route. Wetherell said the AltaVista road show for an initial public offering came at what was then the worst two weeks for Nasdaq stocks in history. The IPO was canceled. AltaVista claims 65 million unique users. Wetherell was speaking at the European Technology Roundtable Exhibition. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------