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Technology Stocks : America On-Line: will it survive ...? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Andrew Furst who wrote (10292)	6/17/1998 5:34:00 PM
From: The Duke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13594

AT&T's assets aren't significantly greater than Sprint's, yet AT&T's market cap is more than 3 times Sprint's market cap. The difference of course is "brand name", i.e. AT&T has more customers - but not because of a better or cheaper service, simply a lack of knowledge by the public that telecom is a commodity - eventually AT&T's "brand value" will fade, with the advent of a more sophisticated public. substitute aol for T and earhlink for sprint in the above quote and what changes? How can you be bullish on AOL and then use "brand name" in scare quotes? Seems like you logic on T cuts tenfold on AOL.

To: Andrew Furst who wrote (10292)	6/17/1998 5:38:00 PM
From: J.S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13594

You make a good point. Indeed, I think it is pretty clear that you could do much better with $30B of hard currency than buying AOL. As someone just mentioned on the AMZN thread, as soon as such an offer was made ATT stock would plummet along with the proposed offering. For $30B cash, Case would cash in before you could say "extraordinary earnings, capital gains from sale of stock, and net operating loss carryover". That would make him one of the richest men in the world. Running AOL would be small potatoes. Please keep in mind that the only thing we know is that the London Times reported that "One person told them that the offer would be ..."