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Technology Stocks : InfoSpace (INSP): Where GNET went! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sarkie who wrote (23908)	1/29/2001 10:43:16 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28311

One take on today....The Night Watch: InfoSpace Rockets Higher on Earnings News; Gateway Climbs as CEO Steps Down By Eric Gillin Staff Reporter 1/29/01 7:22 PM ET thestreet.com Ladies and gentlemen, InfoSpace (INSP:Nasdaq - news) has left the building. In a performance worthy of the King in his prime, the company announced fourth-quarter pro forma earnings per share of 4 cents a share, sprinting past the average 1-cent analyst estimate from First Call/Thomson Financial. Last year, the company lost 3 cents a share. The growth story at InfoSpace was not limited to the bottom line, or earnings, but to the top line, or revenue numbers, too. Revenue came in at $66.1 million from the year-ago $29.4 million, inching about the analyst estimate of $65.8 million. Tonight's hip-swiveling, spotlight-hogging performance aside, InfoSpace still faces trouble, though (as did a pre-bloat, post-Army Elvis). The company said that 2001's revenues would be flat with 2000's mark of $215 million, with 2001 coming in with a pro-forma net loss of 14 cents a share. This widely misses the analyst estimate of a 9-cent profit. The first quarter is now expected to come in with a 5-cent loss, against the analysts' 1-cent profit. Expect another announcement in a month detailing the company's strategy to boost performance. The better-than-expected earnings release has put Infospace on late-night investors' radar screens. It was the most actively traded company on both Island and Instinet, two places where stocks trade even when Wall Street doors are closed. It gained a whopping $1, or 16.7%, to $7 on Instinet, after being up more than 35% before the warning sunk in. Despite a market cap above a half billion dollars and a home base in Bellevue, Wash. -- not far from Microsoft's hallowed campus -- many investors may not even know what InfoSpace does. Well, it ain't a Web portal, but it is a Web presence, providing the guts of many Web sites, streaming maps and phone numbers and stock quotes to a wide array of clients. The outfit began life as a publicly traded company on Dec. 16, 1998, before 1999's massive run-up and 2000's reality check. Back then it was known as Infospace.com, a name it would alter in April 2000, after doing what many other dot-com companies did -- buying small properties, announcing stock splits and running up to massive heights before the speculative bubble broke and harsh market forces rushed in. No longer a dot-com and no longer anywhere near its record high of $138.50, InfoSpace soldiered on, buying Go2Net in July in a $1.5 billion stock deal. Since then, InfoSpace has not performed well, dropping from $50 on the day it announced the Go2Net deal to today's close of $6. Merrill Lynch turned on the company in December, cutting its rating and earnings forecast, citing overly aggressive expectations going forward. InfoSpace, which said it was comfortable with estimates, announced a management shakeup on Jan. 22, putting its former CEO and current chairman back into the CEO slot. This prompted another Merrill downgrade the following day, with InfoSpace cut to intermediate-term neutral. But for this evening anyway, late-night traders were taking notice of InfoSpace's upside surprise and taking care of business. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------