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

To: Roger Sherman who wrote (26239)	7/11/2001 12:45:53 PM
From: Sarkie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28311

Here is a line of bull. "Not Out of the Woods Yet but its Looking Brighter"

To: Roger Sherman who wrote (26239)	7/11/2001 4:24:01 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28311

Speaking of The Fool...Remember This....??? Re Broadband and INSP>>>>>>> What a difference a year makes!!@!!!!@@@!!!! Why would INSP dispense with Broadband if they were so excited about it in the first place????? WHAT is this company doing????? (Bolding mine) fool.com FOOL PLATE SPECIAL: An Investment Opinion Is There Room at InfoSpace for Go2Net? InfoSpace's announcement that it will acquire Go2Net and push into the still-emerging field of broadband services causes confusion and uncertainty among investors. Is it a smart move? The answer boils down to whether the combined company has hit upon the right strategy for servicing tomorrow's broadband-enabled world. By Brian Graney (TMF Panic) July 27, 2000 In one of the largest instances to date of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) family inbreeding, former MSN group manager Naveen Jain and his baby, InfoSpace (Nasdaq: INSP), have agreed to acquire the Paul Allen-supported Internet and broadband services firm Go2Net (Nasdaq: GNET) in a deal initially valued at about $4 billion in stock. Apparently, investors are a little spaced-out by the idea of what the resulting offspring might look like, and InfoSpace sank about 25% in early trading today. Searching for synergies With the ruble-like rapid devaluation of InfoSpace's stock currency today, the perceived value of the share swap now stands at closer to $3 billion instead of last night's $4 billion, which explains why Go2Net's stock barely budged in early trading. Most of the concern revolves around uncertainty regarding the potential synergies to be reaped from the deal, as if that is the only reasonable rationale for a merger of any type these days. Certainly, InfoSpace is not trying to pick up Go2Net on the cheap, as the firm was selling for as little as $1.7 billion in the secondary market as recently as mid-May. And no executive, not even the refreshingly outspoken Jain, would ever actually admit to doing a deal with a currency that could be -- gasp! -- over-valued. Horror of horrors! That leaves the synergies rationale, which Jain and Go2Net CEO Russ Horowitz tried to explain on the post-merger conference call. Basically, the main purpose of the deal is to give InfoSpace a strong beachhead on the wild and woolly plain of broadband, positioning the company to one day offer an integrated platform of infrastructure services for enabling broadband transactions for both merchants and consumers. The killer apps, according to the company, are expected to be entertainment applications in the guise of games, mobile commerce, and interactive TV. Surveying the broadband opportunity How big will the market be for those broadband applications? Estimates from the various market researchers vary widely (big surprise). But at the very least, Jain seems to believe that the broadband opportunity is at least as big as today's wireless services area, which InfoSpace started targeting about three years ago. If Jain is right, then tomorrow's broadband services growth could eventually bring similar rates as InfoSpace's existing wireless Internet platform services business, which saw its revenues double in the most recent quarter from a year ago. Factoring in last night's Q2 results, InfoSpace has been growing revenues at a 30% compounded sequential rate over the past five quarters. Elements such as the growth of the world's wireless Internet subscribers and increasing the average amount of money that InfoSpace can squeeze out of its affiliates through new applications and services will still be the near term drivers for the firm, determining whether that heady top-line growth rate can continue. Tweaking the model However, eventually the InfoSpace model will warp to become more reliant on Go2Net's more prominent business drivers of growing the merchant base and consumer services-related transaction volumes as well as plain old technology licensing. For InfoSpace investors, the driver transition will almost certainly be bumpy, although it really won't begin in earnest until broadband services evolve further from today's nascent development stage. As a business model for the emerging broadband infrastructure environment, the InfoSpace-Go2Net approach sounds as viable and, eventually, sellable as any other strategy out there -- not that there are too many others for comparison's sake. That reality, in fact, will most likely be InfoSpace's greatest near-term challenge. Without anything to benchmark the new company against, pitching the new InfoSpace of tomorrow to an uncertain investment community could end up being the hardest sell of all. Your Turn: Join the active conversation on the InfoSpace discussion board. Also, for more on the company, check out the most recent issue of Motley Fool Research's Internet Report: Wireless Web. InfoSpace was featured prominently there. Related links: InfoSpace Investor Relations website InfoSpace: Enabler of Mobile Commerce?, Fool on the Hill, 3/14/00 StockTalk with Go2Net, 2/7/00 Paul Allen's Wired World, 6/17/99