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

To: craig who wrote (10431)	6/24/1998 7:32:00 PM
From: J.S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13594

Look Everyone, It should be obvious that ATT did not offer the reported 25 million (where did I see 32 million ?). Look what happened to its stock price with the purchase of TCOMA (TCI). In terms of EBITDA, the AOL deal would be much more dilutive. Moreover, AOL has no real assets that ATT needs (it sold those to WCOM) and there is much duplication as opposed to synergy. If ATT stockholders are so punitive in this case, I think they would have "taken the stock behind the barn" if they indeed made this offer. We've gone through the numbers and there is no way that such an offer would have made sense The only straw that supporters could muster was the elusive "brand name". Leaving aside the debate on this issue, one can be fairly sure that value conscious ATT investors would have been very stingy in their valuation of this and other intangibles. I, for one, liked the ATT/TCI mix. With aggressive marketing and consumer education (a real threat to AOL dominance) they can really go to town. Also not mentioned is Sprint's recent announcement of high speed data network technology. This and the MCI/WCOM alliance would have left ATT in the dust. If I were an ATT stockholder, this would give me much hope. The thing here is that they can leapfrog the competition instead now rather than churning out a "five year strategic plan" indicating how they will compete. Good Luck to all, Joe