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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PCSS who wrote (30340)	8/5/1998 10:50:00 AM
From: rupert1	Respond to of 97611

Thread: No mention of CPQ or Alta Vista so read only if you are interested in the background business landscape of "portals" and implicit reference to options available to CPQ and Alta Vista. Victor _____________ Briefing.com's summary notes of the Robertson Stephens "New Millennium" Conference: Beyond Portals "Briefing attended the Monday-Tuesday BancAmerica Robertson Stephens conference, which focussed on Internet companies...... Talk has moved beyond portals. Portals, after all, imply passage through. Now the talk is of "destinations" and "sticky web sites." This means companies are now trying to hang on to viewers once they arrive. Competition is glossed over. This is illogical. The argument was often made that the barriers to entry are too high now for new brand names to be created. Then, the presentation moves to the gobs of money that the company will make. Free markets work such that if big profits are indeed likely, competition will appear. For example, OnSale suggested that they have a unique niche and competition won't be a problem, even from Yahoo or AOL. Maybe, but at this very moment, Wal-Mart or some other Fortune 100 company may be discussing big plans in their boardroom. E*Trade thinks Schwab won't provide strong competition to their new "destination site." But no one asks what Merrill Lynch will be doing in 5 years. If the Internet really will produce the rocket ship profits that were in all those fancy presentations, it is guaranteed that competition will be severe. Barriers to entry will not be too high for the global brand names that want in. This needs further discussion, but the degree to which future competitive pressures are ignored at this time is totally unrealistic. Further "Pioneers" aren't expected, but their were plenty at the conference. There are a lot of highly optimistic, highly confident entrepreneurs leading the new brand name companies, and most feel that the door is now closed to similar development. The conference had some of the early Internet companies that were able to establish global brand names largely with just venture capital and a head start. CNET is an example. Briefing agrees it is unlikely that any new pioneers could create another CNET without the help of a global media company. Yet, the conclusion that the current brand names have the market locked up is wrong (see above). In fact, there were also a lot of private companies making very aggressive presentations. They are mostly looking for more funding and a chance to go public. Given the market caps of the public companies, who can blame them? Content companies attracted more attention that applications companies. The sessions for the applications companies such as software to enhance corporate productivity or to manage Internet advertising drew less interest than the content sessions such as CNET and SportsLine. The "Millennium" part of the conference title apparently reflects profit forecasts. Huge sums of money are being lost, er..invested, by the major Internet companies. Big profits six quarters ahead. New paradigms abound. It was enough to make your humble author wonder if he would be able to find his way home, knowing that there will soon be "a whole new way of doing..." just about everything at work and home. Overall, the mood of institutional investors at the conference remains optimistic. They may not buy completely into the market numbers that everyone trots out from Jupiter (they should charge more for their forecasts!), but they are definitely believers that the Internet will support highly profitable e-commerce and advertising supported content sites. Attendees may even finance some of the would-be challengers that made presentations, hoping for some of those spectacular stock prices. Which means, of course, increased competition" _________________________