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

To: brk who wrote (24019)	1/30/2001 8:48:42 PM
From: KLP	Respond to of 28311

Right...???!!! But in the meantime, here's more info re SI.....For whatever Company that is smart enough to buy us, or keep us.... money.com List of Top 50 web financial sites... cgi.money.com SI is in their top 3 picks... Investing: Bulletin Boards -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In its nearly six years online, the Motley Fool has cultivated a sophisticated group of followers. Unlike the yahoos you'll find on many boards (those notoriously unruly Yahoo message boards come to mind), many of the Fool's denizens espouse a long-term buy-and-hold philosophy. Noise is kept to a minimum by a self-policing membership and vigilant employees who stroll the most active boards looking for riffraff. It's harder to dig through the trash at Raging Bull, but the sophisticated level of the discussion makes the effort worthwhile. "Membermarks," a Siskel and Ebert-style peer review, honors the most respected posters. Silicon Investor has among the most highly trafficked tech boards, and for good reason--the site tends to foster relatively intellectual stock discussions. Fortune 500 CEOs have been known to listen in on the chatter, and there is such camaraderie that members sometimes meet offline to debate stocks. Though posting messages will cost you $60 for six months, reading is free.

To: brk who wrote (24019)	1/31/2001 2:46:15 AM
From: Susan G	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28311

InfoSpace Keeps the Lions at Bay for 30 Days By Tish Williams Senior Writer Originally posted at 9:24 PM ET 1/29/01 on RealMoney.com Today is no good for me. Could we reschedule this mauling for 30 days out? The Coliseum was packed with jostling analysts in pinstripe togas. Eyes toward the heavens, InfoSpace (INSP:Nasdaq - news) executives walked into the dusty heat of the conference call stage to a chorus of howls. Founder Naveen Jain looked up to the Street spectators, flicked a bit of the thick A-1 sauce coating from his face and stared at a dozen snarling lions, pacing yards away behind thick bars. With his chirpy cadence and unflappable positive attitude, Jain looked up into the crowd and asked for a reprieve -- a 30-day stay of execution. Sure, what the heck. It'll give us time to whip up our classic Bloody Mary mix. InfoSpace delivered Street-beating fourth-quarter results. With a profit of 4 cents a share on $66.1 million in revenue, it topped by a penny the First Call/Thomson Financial consensus estimate. It promised to double year 2000's wireless revenue of $18 million in 2001. Voice-recognition products will be hitting the streets in the second quarter. But every muted spectator understood its potentially fatal transgression: last week's simultaneous loss of Rolodex-wielding Vodafone (VOD:NYSE ADR - news) heavyweight Arun Sarin as CEO, acquired-Go2Net Chairman Russell Horowitz from the COO spot and CFO Rand Rosenberg, who would have been quite useful on an earnings call. All of which left newly reappointed CEO Jain to fight with the wimpy weapons he had on hand, and promise better-defined 2001 guidance in 30 days. Internet-company meat. Fatty and rich when aged properly. What numbers Jain and his disciples wielded were distressing. InfoSpace expects a 14-cent-a-share loss in 2001, after a profit of 14 cents per in 2000. You can bet the usual dot-com conditions are at play, but Jain was careful not to affix too much blame on the economic conditions, noting it twice and then focusing on his business. (You say softening economic conditions; I say horrified management fleeing.) Perhaps touching on the reason for at least one of those departures, Jain declared that InfoSpace will phase out all of its direct-to-consumer businesses in 2001. That means InfoSpace is willing to have a sizable chunk of its revenue torn from its financial statements as it sells off Go2Net portal properties in 2001 -- focusing instead on the wireless sector that contributed $18 million of 2000's $214.6 million in revenue, and sales to merchants' approximately $70 million. All that consumer effort, bought in October, sold off in January. That's going to hurt. Knowing the information could prove unpopular, Jain set aside his usually affable rapport for a tougher stance. When asked to wrestle with the 2001 estimate numbers one too many times, Jain quipped at one insistent analyst, "This is how you earn your living, you'll have to use your own judgment." Hastily appointed CFO Tammy Halstead did her best to provide solid numbers to the Street, but came up short when asked to provide year-ago Q1 and Q2 earnings per share figures adjusted with Go2Net's results. What a picnic: Not only does Halstead get the CFO call a week before the earnings report, but she's got to piece together two companies' results so analysts can make their precious models. Needless to say, the typical "color" requested from analysts -- around InfoSpace's subscriber growth, strategic relationships and the like -- were shuffled off until Jain and Halstead get their 30 days of analysis in. And you expected a river of blood to stream to the ends of the arena. That comes in 30 days. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Tish Williams' column takes at look at the people who make Silicon Valley tick. In keeping with TSC's editorial policy, she doesn't own or short individual stocks, although she does own stock options in TheStreet.com. She also doesn't invest in hedge funds or other private investment partnerships. She breathlessly awaits your feedback and invites you to send it to Tish Williams .