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Microcap & Penny Stocks : DGIV-A-HOLICS...FAMILY CHIT CHAT ONLY!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dolfan who wrote (29915)	10/21/1998 5:05:00 PM
From: Ronaldo	Respond to of 50264

From CBS Market Watch: ---------- Investors chat -- management listens By Thom Calandra, CBS MarketWatch Last Update: 12:01 PM ET Oct 20, 1998 SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Oh, the power of that Internet. Remember Integrated Circuit Systems, the Pennsylvania chipset maker whose stock chart looks like a Squaw Valley ski run (direction: down)? The company's executives are in a tiff with shareholders. A board-appointed panel Tuesday said it rejected a $17.50 management offer to buy the company and essentially take it private. Well, an Internet chat room has sprung up around the profitable company's woes. One shareholder, Edward Spiegel, says the online forum has 84 members and may have influenced corporate decisions at Integrated Circuit Systems (ICST). At clubs.yahoo.com, the club started a letter-writing campaign to the board, and Spiegel says the campaign resulted in the board appointing an outside public relations firm. "Using the Internet as our tool, we were able to solicit and recruit the former CEO of ICS, Dr. Stav Prodromou, to put together an alternate slate of directors," Spiegel told me. "It's really an incredible story, and yes, the price of ICS stock is rising." The stock at 14 or so Tuesday is well off its low of 6 1/2 set Aug. 30. Yet a year ago, shares of Integrated Circuit Systems, which has a facility in California's Silicon Valley, sold for north of 40. Online forums are becoming a popular feature of Internet portals. So are community Web sites, which are spun by companies such as www.theglobe.com, which is attempting an IPO this week, www.angelfire.com, which is owned by search engine Lycos (LCOS), and www.xoom.com. "I am amazed what a group of determined shareholders are able to do using the Internet," Prodromou told me. Earnings for the Integrated Circuit Systems are expected to be about 30 cents a share for the quarter that closed Sept. 30. That would be down about 20 percent from a year ago. Integrated Circuit Systems on Tuesday said a special committee of the board of directors "determined not to pursue the possible buyout by the financial group led by management based on, among other things, the advice of the committee's financial adviser that a possible offer by the management group in the range of up to $17.50 per share would not be fair to the shareholders." Current CEO Henry Boreen said in a statement he accepted the decision and was "committed to the company.'' No mention of the online shareholder activists there. But it's what Spiegel and his online shareholder group have been saying for some time -- if in somewhat harsh language. "These guys are pathological," one shareholder in the chat room remarked. "The sooner we boot them, the sooner we get to plus-$23." The online forum's shareholder rants and raves, in this case, are on Yahoo (YHOO). On Monday alone, the Integrated Circuit Systems site received 6,296 page views. Multiply that type of activity by, say, 9,000 publicly traded companies in the U.S. stock market, and you can see why Yahoo's market capitalization is north of $11 billion.

To: Dolfan who wrote (29915)	10/21/1998 5:52:00 PM
From: Dolfan	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 50264

Heres the second one from the soundingboardmag.com site. This one is dated 10/98 more recent and very interesting. I may also send the reporter Peter Meade an email to get some more information from his research. soundingboardmag.com Digitcom Picks Up Indonesia Partner By Peter Meade Citing joint ventures as the fastest way to create an international Internet protocol (IP) telephony network, Digitcom Corp. (www.digitcom.com) has added an Indonesian company to its partner list. The agreement with PT Duta Pertiwi Santosa gives the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company points of presence (PoPs) in five Indonesian cities. Digitcom Vice President Roger Templeton says partnering gives the company the most expedient route to a global IP network because the partners supply an existing base of customers that are eager to take advantage of the reduced long distance rates promised with IP telephony. Digitcom will install its IntraVoice network gateways in the Indonesian cities of Jakarta, Bandung, Medan, Surabaya and Denpasar within the next six weeks. IP telephony services should commence by mid-November, Templeton says. In addition to its IP-Voice long distance service, Digitcom will begin marketing its IP-Fax service in Indonesia during the same period--even though it will not be operable until the end of the year--followed by store-and-forward voice messaging. "Having the network nodes in those five cities gives Digitcom a leg-up on service to each of Indonesia's regional centers as well as other points on the Pacific Rim and North America," Templeton says. Digitcom is looking to play "connect the dots" with future announcements that should be similar to those struck earlier this summer in Argentina, Brazil, Lebanon, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. In addition to building a presence through joint ventures, Templeton says Digitcom also is eyeing opportunities in countries where privatization of telephony services is under way. "These countries are open to deals and are very open to IP telephony," he says. For example, Digitcom received $25 million in financing to help establish the first voice over IP (VoIP) telephony presence in Potsdam, Germany earlier this year. "The move helps the [German] government achieve its promise of creating jobs in cutting-edge industries," Templeton says. "Here's where we have an advantage over giants like AT&T [Corp.]. Working with a small company like us doesn't scare them." Yet, he recognizes Digitcom must accelerate deals as well as construction of its global network before something "scary" does happen. "There's only a limited amount of time before big players such as AT&T move in," he says. "They may move slowly now but they'll come around."