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

To: steve lipson who wrote (5750)	11/11/1997 12:30:00 PM
From: Steve Robinett	Respond to of 13594

Steve, As to whether those particular advertisers matter to the big picture of online advertising, I have no idea. What rang true about their complaints was something like the style of the complaint. If you didn't know they were advertisers, you would think they were subscribers from a few months back. In other words, AOL seems to me to have a cavalier attitude toward subscribers and advertisers, a style of doing business that irks people with its lack of concern for the guy actually paying the bills--arrogance might be the right word. I recognize this discussion is a long way from number-crunching but still useful. Speaking of number-crunching, since AOL cut back on its own promotion and advertising while it bulked up its network and since promotion and advertising costs are expensed while network expansion is depreciated over time as a capital asset, how much of this quarter's $.12/shr comes from reduced advertising/promotion spending with only a small part of the spread-out capital spending costs included? Best, Steve

To: steve lipson who wrote (5750)	11/11/1997 1:57:00 PM
From: Todd Daniels	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13594

>>whether the people complaining matter to the world of online >>commerce. The figures in the Seidman article suggest that >>at present these people most certainly do not. Maybe. But what's troubling are the quality of companies with whom AOL has been doing most of its deals. In the main they are vastly unprofitable Internet outfits, some of whom must do IPOs or secondaries even to make the first payment; and whose staying power until the second or third year payments are due is dicey. Basically, AOL picked the low-hanging fruit back in the summer; and folks extrapolated wildly based upon that small set of data points. Deal flow of late makes even $0.89 FY98 less than a slam dunk; and makes $1.61 FY99 (which is what the stock is trading on) really hairy. Cowen or somebody should hire Jesse Jackson as an AOL analyst. "Keep hope alive!"