To: put2rich who wrote (11859 ) 7/27/1998 9:51:00 PM From: Glenn D. Rudolph Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 164684
SAN FRANCISCO -- Wall Street's cliche of the moment seems to be "the sky-high valuation of Internet stocks." And rooted in this (and every) cliche is a truth: Net stocks are valued so richly that even true believers are hard-pressed to make smart investments. Seasoned investors worry about the S&P 500 trading at a less-than-conservative 1.8 times revenue. So what's an investor think when Amazon.com (AMZN:Nasdaq) -- a company whose long-term success is far from a lead-pipe cinch -- is trading at 22 times revenue, and Yahoo! (YHOO:Nasdaq) at 78 times revenue? Even CNet (CNWK:Nasdaq), a company that reported -- gasp! -- a profit this week, is trading at 22.3 times revenue. No wonder Net stock investors are airsick. So despite big earnings news, most Net stocks were flat for the week. And traders and fund managers out here on the coast -- some of the early cheerleaders for Net stocks -- are now looking at the new Net stocks. "Now you're singing my tune," said one West Coast trader who asked not to be named. "All of my clients are looking for some other way to play the Internet, because dot-coms are just too scary. They're screaming short, so the 'other Net' has been the sales pitch of the week." Kevin Landis, of the $193 million FirstHand Technology Value fund, is another fund manager taking a different angle. "Amazon.com might succeed or fail, Lycos.com might clean the clocks of Yahoo.com," says Landis. "These guys give you a reason to use the Internet -- but good luck picking the winners. But I'll tell you what: If there were a stock called Internet Traffic Inc., everyone on the Street would be buying it." So Landis looks at companies that carry Internet traffic, particularly advanced telecommunications companies like Level 3 (LVLT:Nasdaq) and Qwest (QWST:Nasdaq), two companies with more reasonable price-to-revenue ratios (17.3 in the case of Qwest). "This is the plumbing of the Net," says Landis. "People who own and resell bandwidth. They're building out their networks to keep up with Internet growth."