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Technology Stocks : Data Broadcasting Corp. (DBCC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: esecurities(tm) who wrote (1348)	7/10/1998 8:38:00 PM
From: esecurities(tm)	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 5102

18 months ago Krasner valued DBCC at $15/sh pursuant to takeover speculation. 1/21/97--Is Aussie Media Mogul Eyeing Data Broadcasting? "...For the record, its Internet site, dbc.com , is believed to be the busiest site providing financial news and information, with more than 4 million hits a day. ''We're making as much as anyone from advertising on the Internet,'' says CEO Alan Tessler. Data Broadcasting currently [1/21/97] trades at $7.13 -- around half its earnings before taxes, interest and depreciation -- making it ''very undervalued'' relative to its peers, says analyst Joel Krasner of Southcoast Capital in New York. Even when information services and Internet companies were on fire last year, Data Broadcasting was lukewarm. ''We're cursed with the fact that we've had earnings and cash flow from the get-go,'' jokes Tessler, alluding to investor infatuation with Internet companies that aren't making any money. ..Kerry Packer, Australia's richest man, apparently agrees. I hear that in recent months he has bought a Data Broadcasting stake of just under 5 percent. Packer's Consolidated Press includes newspapers, magazines and television stations. Tessler wouldn't confirm whether Packer is an investor, and Packer couldn't be reached. However, a recent story in the Sydney Morning Herald said that ''gaining a strong foothold in the new-media industry is an important part of Packer's strategy to reshape his business into a multimedia, leisure and entertainment conglomerate.'' Data Broadcasting would clearly fit the bill. But any acquisition would have to be friendly. Tessler and his partner, Alan Hirschfield, control roughly 20 percent of Data Broadcasting's stock. The duo has a history of buying and building business, and then selling them. They got into Data Broadcasting in the early 1990s by purchasing the non-bankrupt part of Financial News Network. ''This is the longest time I've been with a business,'' Tessler says. And he makes it clear, that at the right price, the company could be sold. ''And it will get sold to a strategic-type of buyer* to whom it makes some sense,'' Tessler says. He says that in recent months Data Broadcasting has had numerous conversations with large U.S. media entities about taking a stake in Data Broadcasting -- with an option to eventually buy the entire company. ''We'd do such a deal in a minute, because we believe it would be a major validation of what we're doing,'' he says...Meanwhile, Tessler complains that the stock is undervalued. What would it be worth in a takeover? Krasner, the analyst, figures $15 per share ''if the deal were done today.'' If the company's strategy works out, it could be worth a heck of a lot more a year from now [1/21/98]..." source:&copy 1997 San Francisco Chronicle By HERB GREENBERG nytsyn.com * Travelers (NYSE:TRV)?, Bloomberg?, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)?, Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU)?, E*Trade (NASDAQ:EGRP) merger?, a Japanese Multinational Bank/Brokerage?, Packer?, Murdoch (NYSE:NWS)?............