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

To: Keith A Walker who wrote (10929)	8/4/1998 4:50:00 PM
From: Dell-icious	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13594

Some of the numbers are still quite beyond expectations. They now have 500 Million $ of contracts for advertsing and ecommerce lined up for future quarters. they had the BEST membership growth in their history last quarter. All of these are very good. AOL is not hurting even if the economy is hurting due to slower growth and asia.

To: Keith A Walker who wrote (10929)	8/5/1998 5:40:00 AM
From: Jules B. Garfunkel	Respond to of 13594

Keith and All, It seems to me that AOL's accounting practices continue to be significantly less than "conservative". Consider the following; How is it? that in the last quarter AOL told us that they were going to treat the previous sale of a division as, what did they call it?, "a lease back sale"? This they said would permit them to take operating income and profits for each of the next 20 quarters. By treating the sale this way, they would add $.05 to earnings per share, per quarter, for the next five years. This "treatment as a "lease-back sale" was put in place so as not to have a one time capital gain, but rather to spread the benefit from the sale over the five years time frame . Yet this quarter, AOL purchased two companies, (Mirabilis LTD (ICQ) and NetChannel Inc). Now however, they say that these are one time charges and therefore should be treated as write-offs. Further, yesterday they didn't even release the figures associated with these write-offs in their quarterly earnings report. The following is quoted form yesterday's AOL's earnings report. "The Company said that it is not reporting net income today because previously announced, one-time charges are in the process of being finalized. The Company expects to report a charge for the settlement of a shareholder suit, as well as write-offs for in-process research and development in connection with its acquisitions of Mirabilis LTD (ICQ) and NetChannel Inc. Prior to finalizing its accounting for the acquisitions, the Company consulted with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and these discussions are continuing." How can someone invest in AOL when their internal accounting practices do not allow us to know what is really going on within the company? Also, what are these continuing discussions AOL is having with the Securities and Exchange Commission, all about? BTW, as you might guess, I am recently short AOL and will be happy to remain with my short position. The above are my own personal opinions, and I reserve the right to change my mind at any time, and/or, to be completely wrong. As always, I advise the reader to do their own research. Jules