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Strategies & Market Trends : Roger's 1998 Short Picks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazlo Pierce who wrote (9984)	6/13/1998 7:33:00 PM
From: Market Tracker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18691

Monday Short [NSOL] 39 15/16 as mentioned in Barron's. to quote from Alan Abelson's "Heard on the Street" column... "Our friend Mike Murphy, proprietor of the Overpriced Stock Service, is not among Amazon's fans. For that matter, it grieves us to say, he hasn't a kind word for many of the Internet stocks. In the most recent issue of his newsletter, for example, he takes a swipe at Network Solutions. And, if we weren't so determined to be upbeat, we'd have to admit he makes a very convincing case. Network Solutions assigns the domain names -- that is, the addresses of home Web pages -- which now number in the millions. Uncle Sam used to do it and then, via competitive bidding, gave the job to Network Solutions in 1992. The company went public in September 1997 at $18, ran up all the way to 58 and last we looked was a shade under 40. Unlike Amazon, incidentally, it's in the black. Its P/E is a modest 80 or so. The problem is this: Network Solutions has a monopoly on the domain business, but it soon won't. Come this September, it is due to get competition and from no fewer than five companies. A new nonprofit corporation with an international board of directors, reports Mike, will oversee the competing domain-name suppliers. If Mike has a fault, it's that he's just a little too cynical. He notes that Network Solutions contends it'll benefit from increased revenue when its monopoly ends. "Honestly," he comments, "that's what they said." He adds bemusedly that the company failed to explain how "a 100% market share at $70 a pop can transition to, say, a 20% market share at $15 a pop and still be a great benefit." He sees the stock going back to $18."