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Gold/Mining/Energy : GTR GROUP INC. (formerly Games Trader) TSE:GTR, AMEX:GIG -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Professor Dotcomm who wrote (270)	6/19/2001 9:52:38 PM
From: ratherbelong	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 290

Prof.com, Big news today. In fact, I think it is very important to look at just who purchased the GTI inventory...that's right, none other then Barnes & Noble who own GameStop among several other video game related entities. You may recall recently the buyout of Funcoland that started out with a bid by none other then EB which then escalated into a bidding war between EB and Barnes & Noble to gain control of Funco, all of which was very profitable for Funco stockholders. You might say that EB and Barnes & Noble don't like each other and that would be an understatement. It all goes back to when EB tried to buy Riggio's NeoStar (Babbages) out of bankruptcy and Riggio was able to buy the company back with a lower (non-matching) offer. That started the bad blood and the two companies have been going at it ever since. Now if EB gets the idea that Riggio is looking at buying Mad Catz's accessory business, things could really heat up. Please understand, I am not saying that this is going to occur, I am just happy to see such a huge player as Barnes & Noble in the loop here...and I guarantee you that EB is not happy that B&N was able to buy what I am sure was a tremendous amount of used game inventory for what I am sure will turn out to be bargain basement prices. I like what I see happening here and you couldn't pry my GIG shares away from me. As far as GTR Group's Q4 reporting is concerned I am happy to see them waiting until so deep in Q1 to report because right now the market is all about forward visibility and what better way to be able to project Q1 and beyond then to wait this long and give a accurate projection of what I believe will be stellar Q1 results. So far, I am very happy with our acting Pres/CEO's moves. He promised to focus on re-deploying GTI's assets and three weeks later all their inventory is sold to Barnes & Noble. The gameburst.com site probably cost next to nothing to operate and could probably be left alone and intact for now since, someday down the road, broadband and DSL could make such a site very viable. I think Zapyou.com probably just gets shut down because without used game inventory to support it, the concept of an i-net turn key video game operation becomes improbable. And so, all this leads us to Perlis doing exactly what he said he would do, which is to focus on the real future of the company, Mad Catz. With an $80M dollar credit facility to draw on and GTI's debt retired, I have little doubt that we are now off and running. We will look back in six months (after X-box and game cube launch) and realize that this was the correct strategy for growing what will become a very profitable business. My hats off to Mr. Perlis and GTR management. Best regards to all GIG longs, RBL