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Technology Stocks : America On-Line: will it survive ...? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (5632)	11/7/1997 10:24:00 AM
From: Tim Kenney	Respond to of 13594

>AOL added 821,000 members worldwide during the quarter to reach more than 9.4 million on Septem< But, Sam, AOL's sub numbers are as credible as their old accounting numbers. Howevever, you are correct that Wall Street will still be behind them as long as they smell juicy underwriting fees. What you have to worry about is the momo investors. Quite frankly, I have no guess what they will do. As far as the retail herd, they will eventually catch on, but it is probably premature to assume that they have figured out age old Wall Street games.

To: Sam who wrote (5632)	11/7/1997 10:28:00 AM
From: Brent D. Beal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13594

***AOL met the consensus .12 expectation, .16 with sale of XCIT stock in accordance with everyone that owns a magnifying glass. Ya right. This statement was not audited and it should be clear to everyone by the fact that they managed to hit the concensus number square on that this is a messaged number. They knew the ad revenue was down and knew they couldn't miss the $.12 cents--hell, they probably took depreciation allowances on the raw sewage leaving their headquarters. I do expect a restatement and ultimately, I expect some very damaging revelations about subscriber growth. When I sign up for a free month and then call to cancel and they offer me another month and this is repeated over and over again, I know that something is wrong. Combine this with the fact the advertisers have been less than thrilled with click-through counts, etc. etc. and it ads up to some serious questions about AOL's stated numbers. Advertisers know this, so it's surprising to me that there are investors that still think things are rosy. This is actually good, since I own puts, and will make a lot more money is the bad news just trickles out over the next 6 months. I didn't expect it would happen any other way given AOL's track record. I notice that management sold quite a few shares before the shit hit the fan--why am I not surprised?