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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Roger Bass who wrote (1334)	2/9/1998 6:25:00 PM
From: Mark Carson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Gentlemen, Personally I have done a great deal of research on this company and firmly believe that ATHM (if they dodge the 'take-over' bullet) can own most of an extremely large market, at least domestically. The question I have to ask you is this: Can ATHM go from being a $7.4 Million company to a $1.0 BILLION + company by 2002 without imploding? Rapid Growth and uncontrollable expansion has killed many, many companies in the past . . Mark

To: Roger Bass who wrote (1334)	2/10/1998 1:23:00 AM
From: ahhaha	Respond to of 29970

An analytical attempt to evaluate this company accurately is doomed to failure. There are too many unknowns. My best guess happens to be the current price. The market price reflects the instantaneous expectations of everyone buying or selling the shares and therefore contains all the information available. Over time this perception must be adjusted because new data becomes available. The stock price fluctuates. No one knows the future. The company has to create a good future for itself. Then the stock price will rise. There are many reasons why this is likely regardless of the quality of company management decisions. The company is being evaluated primarily on its ISP potential. I believe the ISP factor will become a cash cow that enables the company to fund the true added value aspects of ATHM: @Work and @Media. Little is divulged publicly about either. The company is reticent about these divisions and I tend to agree with this strategy. ATT, the cable companies, and cable ISPs all benefit from telephony. That is not in the stock at this time because until Friday's MFN news, it wasn't for public consumption. It's the public greed and fear that drives the profundity of the price discovery mechanism, not the presumed advantaged insider's. When the public which includes brokerage house analysts fully understand and if the breakthrough is valid, you'll get upward price adjustment. That might be from a lower price so the net may be today's price. Over the long term telephony becomes robust under this carrier technology advancement, so ATT must be involved even if they have to form a consortium with the cable companies to get the enhanced infrastructure in place. ATT swings an enormous influence with all companies and the effect would be massive endorsement of cable as the preferred delivery mechanism. The public has already made that endorsement, but companies are risk averse and want someone else to lead. I'll tell you what ATHM has wrt telephony. They have a rapidly growing subscriber base. ATT can't sell advanced telephony devices to the public. They've tried, but telephony software runs on computers or computer like appliances. I have made the argument before that it is in the nature of people to want to separate tv and computer functionality. A videophone whose signal comes in by cable is preferable to be managed from computer or thin client, not managed on tv. They are categorically different ergonomic and interfacial experiences. The added value of the cable experience starts where the demand is highest: ISP functionality. The couch potatoes will become surfers. The phone yakkers will become vidiots. And the tv will have the marginally manageable cheap one way digital mass broadcast. But this can't happen quickly unless the plant can be enhanced cheaply and quickly. That's where the MFN could accelerate the needed developments. I believe the value added phone service you mention is on ATHM's drawing board, but it wasn't executable because the 1M critical level of subscribers hadn't been reached and the infrastructure was a constraint to reaching that threshold. No doubt the midnight oil is burning in San Mateo preparing for the possibility of accelerated cable telephony facility deployment. As far as ISP models go, AOL reached 112 today which may prove to be its all-time high, and they're raising the rent. If you know how svelte of a service AOL is, you gotta believe ATHM would carve them up toot sweet. The fact is, I don't know much. No one does. The company is a speculation. You have to have faith. You might be wrong and lose. But if you're right you'll really be right. The proof of that is the share price. Pure faith. I love it. I'll be prayin' for you brother as any other true believer would.