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Technology Stocks : Netscape -- Giant Killer or Flash in the Pan? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sonki who wrote (2783)	4/17/1998 2:08:00 AM
From: Buzz Lightyear	Respond to of 4903

Hi Sonki, IMO the "Chief Executive Officer James Barksdale waiving all but one dollar of his salary and bonus in 1997",(invested sacrifice) Gives great credibility to Mr. Barksdales integrity in this greed driven market. Am also hoping the key word in the news article below is "Beginning". I believe the company has been taking major steps in the right direction. And the value placed on those prospects may be a tad conservative. Good Luck (ps) right now i'm dreaming of intelligent search agents (ie. give it a list of my resources and specific interests and wake up with all right answers.. ((g))Here is one sequential revenue growth for XCIT since inception. Read the above at your own risk. Time for sleep. (UPDATE) Investors Beginning To Appreciate Value Of Netscape's Web Site Dow Jones Online News, Thursday, April 16, 1998 at 17:14 By Joelle Tessler, Staff Writer NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- As Internet stocks have shot through the roof in recent months, one Web name has been left behind. But investors are starting to buy shares of Netscape Communications Corp. as they realize the company's valuable Netcenter Web site puts it in the same business as Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), Excite Inc. (XCIT) and Lycos Inc. (LCOS). Netscape's shares surged 29% Thursday, along with many other Internet stocks, on a day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 86 points. The stock (NSCP) closed up $5.813 at $25.563, with 30.6 million shares traded, making it the second-most-active Nasdaq issue. Average daily volume is around 2.5 million shares. As the default start page for users of Netscape's Navigator browser, Netcenter still gets a massive amount of Web traffic - making it one of the most valuable properties on the Internet. So as Netscape struggles to recover from Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) full-fledged assault on it in the browser market, the company is trying to build up Netcenter as a major Internet gateway for consumers. Netscape is currently deep in negotiations with all of the leading search engines to provide content and services for the redesigned site. And as the company considers a wide range of options for the site, some are speculating Netscape could strike a closer agreement with one of the Web navigation companies. As Netscape talks with the search engine concerns - as well as some big media companies - about how to recast Netcenter, speculation about the company's plans for the site has run rampant. Some have guessed that Netscape could reach an agreement that would make one of the seach engines or America Online Inc. (AOL) exclusively responsible for all of the programming on Netcenter. But Jennifer Bailey, Netscape's Web site vice president, said the company believes users need a choice of search services. BT Alex. Brown analyst Mary McCaffrey said that while Netscape could forge closer ties with just one of the search companies as it tries "to do something different" with the Netcenter business, she believes the company will continue to have relationships with the other Internet guides. Netscape's Bailey said the company is discussing partnering with some of the search engines and big media companies to build services or provide programming for the site. She said as the company tries to transform its highly trafficked Netcenter into a major Internet gateway, it needs to add more features that will appeal to consumers. Netscape also is going through the annual process of renegotiating the terms of the agreements under which it directs traffic to the search engines through the Net Search button. The company currently has premiere relationships to send traffic to the four leading search engines - Yahoo, Excite, Lycos and Infoseek Corp. (SEEK). Netscape also sends traffic to Excite's Web Crawler brand; AOL NetFind - which is powered by Excite technology; HotBot; LookSmart; and CNET Inc.'s (CNWK) Snap!. All five of the latter, however, have less prominant placement. The major search engines each paid an average of $5 million for about 20% of Netscape's search traffic for the 1996-1997 program, although each of the companies paid different fees for different amounts of traffic. Netscape, which many see as a likely takeover candidate, has been struggling since Microsoft entered the browser market. Netscape has begun to give its client browser software, Navigator, away for free and is trying to build up its enterprise software operations. The company also has created a new Web site unit to focus on the Netcenter business. Wall Street has been speculating for some time that Netscape could split its software operations from its Web site business and might even consider selling one or both. Rumors that Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW) could acquire Netscape helped drive the shares up Thursday. Sun Micro, Oracle Corp. (ORCL), and IBM have been named as potential suitors for the software business and AOL has been named as a potential buyer for the Web site business. Harmon said Netcenter would be valuable to AOL because the proprietary on-line service is trying to build up its presence on the Web. Also, Netcenter is more focused on the business audience, a market AOL is trying to develop. The analyst believes Netcenter is worth between $600 million and $700 million. Copyright (c) 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.