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Technology Stocks : WCOM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: James Calladine who wrote (9050)	2/4/2002 5:05:12 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Respond to of 11568

Worldcom Group, the stock you are buying when you enter an order for WCOM, had $41 billion of goodwill and other intangibles at 9/30. Here's a link to WCOM 9/30 financials: www1.worldcom.com Zach's is looking at consolidated numbers, including MCIT. Here are those numbers: www1.worldcom.com In any case, book value of equity, whether you include goodwill or take it out, is generally not a meaningful number. WCOM's price/book value is either 1.7 or 0.44, respectively, depending on whether you deduct or leave in the intangibles. IBM's P/BV is 7.8, GE's is 6.8, MSFT's is 6.6, INTL's is 6.5, and YHOO's is 4.9. Do any of those numbers help you determine what's a better investment or which is over or undervalued? BV is generally not helpful, the only exception being in financial services where financial capital is the productive asset and, because most financial mergers in the past have been poolings, BV is a reliable measure of the underlying productive capacity of the business. Beyond that, I wouldn't spend much time on it. Bob