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Technology Stocks : Altaba Inc. (formerly Yahoo) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: craig crawford who wrote (7091)	2/2/1998 9:52:00 PM
From: phbolton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27307

YHOO's "rating" and "share": For a TV show two key numbers are the total number of viewers, the "rating", and the percent of the viewers watching TV at that time, the "share". (demographics also count but we'll leave that to another time) Does anyone have a clue as to what YHOO's share of the internet might be? My guess is that the share is much less than 1%. The share will probably be a prime determinant of the percent of the total internet advertising revenue that goes to YHOO in the same way that all of the TV/radio/magazine/cable advertising money is spread out over all TV/radio/magazine/cable that have share. The ratings/share in TV land do not count "surfing". Have to stay for a trade secret length of time to be counted.

To: craig crawford who wrote (7091)	2/2/1998 9:56:00 PM
From: Keith J	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27307

Beats me. Why did YHOO go from mid 50s to 35 in less than a month? Why do people pay 40x earnings for Coke which is growing at 10-15% a year? AOL is valued so high because it is running at about 2 billion in revenue a year, irregardless of its profits. Steve Case today supposedly stated that he believes the price of access will come down. Won't do wonders for AOL's growth in revenues or profits. Personally, I use AOL. But it can be very frustrating at times. I'm not saying I'll use it forever. Also depends on how they upgrade their service/software. I think as people become more familiar with their options and the "search engines" include more and more features, AOL had better keep on top of providing value or people will leave them in droves. Hey, are there any chatters out there? XCIT chat is very similar to AOL chat. I think YHOO chat is pretty worthless. In regard to valuing YHOO with AOL. Not at this point in time. AOL is projected to earn about $16 million in the December quarter, YHOO had only $25 million in revenues. A new subscriber adds revenue to AOL, whereas a new set of eyeballs to YHOO doesn't necessarily provide any new revenue. Hard to see them equal at these levels. However, AOL doesn't have the margins YHOO has, in terms of cost of revenues. Depending what happens, sure they could end up with similar valuations. But what happens if the economy goes majorly south and advertisers and consumers cut back spending? The valuation level could be 10 billion, 3 billion, or 1 billion. As I reasoned more about my YHOO short (ave. price = 61), it seemed like even though it is overvalued, I didn't want the risk of being open to unlimited losses, and that's why I added the XCIT as a long to hedge - because I perceive on a relative basis, it was and still is undervalued. Working out well so far, XCIT up 40%, YHOO up less than 10%. This sector is going to be volatile, and that's also part of why I'm hedged. KJ