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Technology Stocks : Altaba Inc. (formerly Yahoo) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas C (Hijacked) who wrote (12827)	7/16/1998 6:12:00 AM
From: John J. Thrall	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27307

MY NAME IS JOHN THRALL, AND I SHORTED YAHOO O.K., first of all I'd like to reveal myself as someone who has shorted Yahoo two days ago (after that ridiculous 8+ jump). I have my doubts about the stock, but I want to ask the Yahoo bulls to explain something to me - how can yahoo grow revenue and earning at 100x the rate of dell, msft, and others (using current PE) using its current revenue model? In particular, yahoo relies on an ad based revenue model, where it charges advertisors a cetain $ per hit per banner. Now, to increase this money, they must: 1. increase the number of hits A LOT (the internet doesn't grow that fast) 2. Put a lot more banners on each page (don't think that will help the prices they can charge) 3. charge more because of better targeting (by Collaborative filtering, profiling users with downolad history, etc.) - they have tries to do this over the last year with minor increases in rates (20-30% as I recall). And further increase is unlikely. if they expand the info on site, they simply increase cost and spread out the 'portal' hits they already have. And anyone (read MSFT and Netscape) can increase content the same way. imagine if we valued Disney taking into account the sportzone 'domain value' like we do yahoo? Do we really think that Netscape and MSFT will continue to pass this add revenue (poultry right now) on to yahoo? NO, when it gets big they will use their hardcoded sites to capture the user and cut off yahoo. Yahoo got away with murder this quarter by increasing revenues through company purchases and preserving profits using one time right offs. This will work if they keep buying companies. but only if they can find companies with potential growth on par with the way yahoo has been valued? Wouldn't these companies already be valued similarly? I need someone to explain how Yahoo justifies these price levels based on profit potential, not herd mentality, and I am open minded to any responses. Unless Yahoo announces some joint licensing agreements (with espn, nbc, wsj, something) I am highly skeptical. Convince me to cover my short, John Thrall