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Technology Stocks : Internet Capital Group Inc. (ICGE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bob zagorin who wrote (3581)	2/8/2004 10:54:57 PM
From: Sr K	Respond to of 4187

does that imply later equity exchanges?

To: bob zagorin who wrote (3581)	2/12/2004 12:10:12 AM
From: puborectalis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4187

Crammer's Article News Out Must Read by: dilution90210 (39/Beverly Hills) 02/12/04 12:07 am Msg: 191288 of 191288 biz.yahoo.com By James J. Cramer, RealMoney Columnist The subtlety of promotional ethics often gets trampled on by broad rules meant to target miscreants. Take Internet Capital Group (NasdaqSC:ICGE - News). I have been watching this stock trade 23 million shares a day, a huge increase in volume, as the company keeps exchanging stock for debt in an endless battle to clean up the residue of loans left over from the heyday. In a previous decade, ICG was a promoter's dream, and Henry Blodget, late of the industry, played ICG to the hilt. The breakup value, the hidden gems, the outrageous possibilities, they all fitted in perfectly as ICG proceeded to finance the heck out of the market. These days, of course, ICG seems like a hulking carcass, a kind of empty hot-rolled steel plant on the banks of some godforsaken tributary of the Delaware waiting to be refurbished as something, anything, that could make it worthwhile. And you know what? It would be simple to get behind it once again. ICG is an agglomeration of stakes in a handful of public and a fistful of private companies. The public pickings are slim; even if they were to double and double again, it wouldn't mean much to this $250 million market cap company. Ah, but in the wrong hands, in the hands of someone who wants to promote, who has a gift for promoting, who can and will use whatever vehicle available to promote, ICG could become a nightmarish frenzy of activity, easily doubling in the blink of an eye as unsuspecting individuals seized on the lottery-ticket nature of a 50-cent security. You can almost hear it spin out of control: "OK, let's take LinkShare, which ICG owns 40% of. In the heyday, LinkShare was going to come public for a billion dollars and at the time, it was losing money hand over fist. Now it's profitable and it has to be worth something; maybe the 40% share of LinkShare is worth the whole price of the company. And when you consider that ValueClick (NasdaqNM:VCLK - News) owns its competitor, BeFree, who's to say that ValueClick won't make a preemptive bid right to ICG to own the targeted Web affinity advertising market!" Or Co-nect, led by Chairman of the Board and former U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander, an education play that ICG owns 36% of. With the No Child Left Behind law demanding better schools, who's to say that Co-nect doesn't have the multi-billion dollar answer? Or how about the 80% holding in CommerceQuest? Wouldn't that make a great fit with Ariba (NasdaqNM:ARBA - News), which is on an acquisition spree? Maybe CommerceQuest is worth the whole price of ICG! You get the picture. What's to keep someone from doing this? Absolutely nothing. There is no "license" to promote. There is no "board of promotion governors." We are at the mercy of people's judgments and what they intend to get behind. It's not enough to ask "Are you being paid by ICG for this?" It's also not enough to disclose whether you own it. I can imagine a world in which someone could buy $1 million worth of ICG on margin, get behind this story in various venues and then blow it out at 85 cents. So, what to do? I urge anyone buying anything that is not a company with real revenue and earnings to remember why you might be reading or hearing a positive story. It might not be just because someone's trying to make money for you. It could be because someone is desperate to make money himself and is scamming you. Hopefully, the editors or managers at the venue where the promoter toils have judgment about this stuff. But that's not always the case. Sure, the government always has an ability to subpoena records, to find out what's really going on, but that often happens way too late to matter. All you can do is be vigilant, skeptical and thoughtful about what could turn out to be totally bogus, motivated analysis. In other words, caveat emptor is