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Technology Stocks : Altaba Inc. (formerly Yahoo) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: blankmind who wrote (26124)	12/16/2000 11:29:28 AM
From: SouthFloridaGuy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27307

What the heck are you smoking? Can I have some? The company has already given flat guidance. This stock is dead for at least a year. See you in the teens.

To: blankmind who wrote (26124)	12/17/2000 3:18:46 PM
From: jcky	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27307

blankman, Quite frankly, I really don't know what it will take to convince you that Yahoo! is in for some stormy days. I am not questioning Yahoo's long term viability nor am I suggesting Yahoo is falling off the face of the earth. <#1 - you're wrong about PC Sales - they're growing - just at 10-15% instead of 20+% - but much of this is b/c the replacement rate is slowing> So the rate of growth for the worldwide PC market is slowing or decelerating. From the data you have provided, PC sale growth for next year is expected to decline 25 to 50 percent. That's not a problem? Let's look at it another way. AMAT, INTC, MSFT and DELL have all warned. This is a series of inevitable events down the PC food chain. Currently, PCs are the major gateway for entry into the world wide web. Fewer PC sales imply fewer new eyeballs for Yahoo! to target. This isn't exactly rocket science. If Yahoo! meets expectations this quarter, I suspect the reason is that management were able to lock in higher fees with longer term contracts for their overpriced banner ads early in the dot com game. When these contracts expire, clients will have the upper hand in negotiating better rates with shorter terms. This will pressure Yahoo's profit margins in the future. No more easy money for the company. Those days are over. Just think of it this way. When cellular phones first appeared on the market, customers were forced into long term contracts with high rates. But as the market matured and competition developed, both the length of the contract and the price for the service provided were reduced. This is the natural evolution of a competitive market. <#2 - yahoo's audience - as measured by unique users & pages viewed - continues to grow> Internet metrics such as unique users or pages viewed are one of the most overrated statistics cited by the New Economy proponents. It's really a bunch of bunk, in my humble opinion. A more relevant question is whether Yahoo! is able to monetize the traffic flowing thru their proprietary web sites. After all, what good is Yahoo! if everyone on the world wide web visits their web sites but no one spends a dime? Unfortunately for Yahoo!, the efficacy of their banner ad sites and e-commerce sites can be easily tracked and calculated. Yahoo! will be held accountable for the effectiveness of their advertising medium by their renewing clients. <#3 - & I learned this one the hard way - stock price movement means nothing> The market can be a very emotional and irrational beast in the short term and anything is possible. The dot com mania of the past few years is living testimony. And in the long run, the weight of a company's fundamental will eventually override any short term noise. But to imply stock price movements are meaningless is erroneous. In fact, it matter the most where it counts the most: the wallet. Investors who bought Yahoo! near its all time highs are experiencing a real monetary loss, not a "paper" loss. <#4 - finally - when has yahoo ever not met expectations? or even hinted of real bad news? If anything, I think yhoo turns in a stellar qtr in 4Q01; & stock takes off big time. IMHO> So just because Yahoo! has always met expectations implies Yahoo! will never miss expectations? I suppose you have never taken a class in logic? Well, MSFT hasn't missed expectations for the past ten years, until now. MSFT never misses their numbers, right? Good luck. Regards,