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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GraceZ who wrote (28633)	7/18/2001 8:50:06 AM
From: GraceZ	Respond to of 29970

I was beginning to think @Home was invisible to the press with all this merger talk between T and Comcast. She comments that Roberts doesn't want to comment on @Home. Duh! You don't talk up how valuable an asset is when you are trying to acquire it on the cheap.....has this woman never been to a garage sale? TheStandard.com @Home Alone By Cory Johnson If Comcast succeeds with its takeover of AT&T Broadband, what will become of Excite@Home, one of the Internet Economy's most ambitious startups? In the name of strengthening AT&T Broadband's operations, Comcast could hurt the prospects of @Home, AT&T's only true broadband operation - a network built to carry data traffic. Conversely, @Home could turn out to be the jewel in AT&T Broadband's crown. AT&T has a controlling stake in @Home, with 23 percent of @Home's stock and six of its 11 board seats. Ma Bell has been central to restructuring the Redwood City, Calif.-based high-speed Net access provider, most recently rewriting an access agreement and giving @Home $100 million in cash. Despite that infusion, @Home is in a precarious position with a $1.99 share price. It has racked up more than $1 billion in debt while burning through $3.3 million each week. To stem the losses, the company laid off 13 percent of its staff in March. Investors have long hoped @Home's high-wire act was insured by AT&T. If Comcast acquires AT&T Broadband, only Comcast can catch a falling @Home. But will it want to? Comcast CEO Brian Roberts says he can cut AT&T Broadband's costs and rapidly raise margins. Does he see @Home as a cost, or as an opportunity? No comment, Roberts said to The Standard. Although @Home remains Comcast's only high-speed access provider, Comcast sold 4.1 million @Home shares between June 22 and July 2. That reduced Comcast's share from 9.8 percent to 8.4 percent. Meanwhile, Comcast is apparently playing hardball in drawing up a new contract with @Home. "We've been negotiating and will come to an agreement in a couple of months," says Roberts. "But any agreement will not be exclusive; we're committed to working with multiple ISPs." Still, analysts say that Comcast is deeply wrapped up in @Home. "Clearly, Comcast is not wed to @Home the way AT&T is," says Jeffries analyst Frederick W. Moran. "But we suspect Comcast would support and use @Home in the end." Indeed, Roberts adds Comcast is pleased with @Home's recent network overhaul. And replicating its Net-centric service would come at a tremendous cost. "It would cost Comcast billions and take years," says one West Coast hedge-fund manager who's been scooping up @Home stock cheap. "Why would they waste money building what @Home already has?" The biggest risk to investors is the convertible bonds @Home issued a few weeks ago. These raise the potential of a death spiral of dilution if the firm can't hold on to $100 million in cash or get its stock up. But CEO Patti Hart has put together some savvy deals that, she says, were supposed to leave @Home with $175 million at the end of the second quarter - enough to get cash flow positive. (The firm reports its quarterly results later this summer.) With Comcast as a newly committed partner, it's likely to back up @Home with cash to avoid the dilution of the death-spiral convertible bond; after all, Comcast would own 31.4 percent of @Home and have a great incentive to support it. So it's with some irony that in the discussion of Comcast's massive $44.5 billion offer to acquire AT&T Broadband, little is said of @Home, worth only $812.7 million. Because when new-economy types talk about the marvelous possibilities of broadband, they're not talking about cable television and Wayne's World. Smart money is betting Comcast is talking about @Home. biz.yahoo.com