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Technology Stocks : IFLY - travel sales on the web pure play -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ajunkh who wrote (1049)	5/7/1998 9:13:00 AM
From: Prophet	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4761

The other thing to remember is that a lot of these upcoming Internet agencies do not have the types of contracts and relationships that IFLY has with the airline industry. SABRE will be able to compete for the mere fact that the name is well recognized. However, there is no price flexibility at all in that service. Furthermore, I find that service hard to use. The bulk of Internet clients for IFLY will be mostly vacationers. The key for IFLY would be to forge relationships with vacation providers (e.g. hotels, cruise, etc.), perhaps by becoming a tour/vacation Operator at a grand scale. In my opinion, the bid advantage IFLY has is the business they make through the 800 number service. Its competitors do not have this advantage and would take a while to catch up to IFLY. That portion of the business by itself is growing tremendously. The key to IFLY will be "Internet Visibility"; so be prepare to see a few losing quarters due to advertising expenses. That visibility would eventually pay off.

To: ajunkh who wrote (1049)	5/7/1998 11:04:00 AM
From: chirodoc	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4761

<<<<Online there will be fewer to be sure that will make it, but I do think that there is room for 5, 10, even 20 successful online agencies ...you are overly optimistic i am afraid. there is not room for 20. .....i would guess there will be a handful that will make gobs of money and have their stocks soar, that is where i want to be. .....i don't care about the struggling outfits: that is why i own msft, saber, ptvl and ifly--i will sell the one that stumbles. so far the first three are doing well on the web and ifly needs to prove itself. curtis

To: ajunkh who wrote (1049)	5/7/1998 5:11:00 PM
From: LAWRENCE C.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4761

Profit margins play a big factor in internet transactions. If IFLY runs into trouble with generating a profit on internet transactions, due to a low cap on internet transactions this affects the potential future profits estimates considerably. How many internet transactions will they need to break even and what profit margin per transaction they can generate becomes very important. 1) Will they need 1 million, 10 million or 100 million transactions to break even? 2) Will they make money per transaction? Certainly they hope to or you wouldn't have companies like IFLY planning to enter the internet market. 3) How much profit will be generated per internet transaction above the breakeven point? .01, .05, $1, $2, $5, more than $5 but less than the $10 cap 4) What are the cost and profit equations? 5) How long will it be before we have a better internet site? 6) What will our market share be? 1%, 2%, 5%, 10% or more Existing airline sites are already establishing brand loyalty and market share and profits (??). The airline sites have a competitive advantage. They can gear their systems to see their unsold seats real time and adjust the price near real-time depending on propietary info. If profitable, other airlines will market their seats directly in competition with non-airline sites. So you have the non-airline sites fighting for the remainder of the pie. Will IFLY generate enough market share on the internet to be profitable on the internet? That depends on potential profit per internet transaction. 7) If internet transactions are extremely profitable, there will be more companies trying to enter the field. These are some of the questions that affect the growth potential. Big difference Lucky Lawrence