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To: JBL who wrote (25979)	11/14/1998 5:25:00 AM
From: llamaphlegm	Respond to of 164687

November 13, 1998 IPO of theglobe.com Rockets, Capitalizing on Internet Mania An INTERACTIVE JOURNAL News Roundup Shares of theglobe.com rocketed in their debut on Wall Street, climbing as high as $97 from an IPO price of just $9, as the Web site company took advantage of investors' wild enthusiasm for Internet stocks to revive its offering less than a month after sluggish demand forced a postponement. The New York company, which runs an online community site with revenue of just $1.2 million in the first six months of the year, was valued by the market at $950.1 million as the stock hits its high. The stock slipped from its high later, but still closed at a lofty 63 1/2 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The buying mania that has engulfed the Internet stock sector this week allowed theglobe to bring its stock to market just three weeks after it was forced to delay its IPO -- and cut the price that investors were charged to buy in the IPO. Even amid the week's pyrotechnics in the Net sector, theglobe and its underwriters -- led by Bear Stearns & Co. -- didn't raise the IPO price. Before the postponement, the company had expected its stock to fetch $11 to $13 a share in the offering. The $9-a-share price that was set for the deal was at the midpoint of the revised range. The offering, which included 3.1 million shares, generated proceeds of just $27.9 million for the company and underwriters. The offering puts 32% of the company in the hands of the public. theglobe has 9.8 million shares outstanding. The proceeds are earmarked for advertising and other marketing opportunities, and to enhance the company's technology. The IPO began trading two days after EarthWeb, another Web site operator, broke a two-month drought for Internet stocks by exploding onto the market in a near-record-setting deal. That stock, priced at $14 a share in its IPO, traded as high as 85 1/16 on Nasdaq Friday, before closing with a loss of 2 1/4 to 67. Investors scrambling for theglobe.com's shares despite concerns of some IPO analysts about the company's business model, which is comparable to that of GeoCities, another online community site and recent IPO high-flier. Analysts are concerned that theglobe.com may have trouble attracting large, long-term advertisers because the company's site, which is a collection of individual users' Web sites, covers such a wide range of interests and topics that it may be difficult to find long-term advertisers. "We weren't positive on GeoCities and we're less than that on theglobe.com," said Scott Sipprelle, managing member of Midtown Research Group, a New York firm that tracks IPOs. Midtown Research has advised its clients to avoid theglobe.com. Nevertheless, the small number of shares sold by the company probably contributed to the strong demand and phenomenal runup in the price of the stock. Mr. Sipprelle noted that Internet stocks in general are overvalued because there aren't enough of them trading in the public market to satisfy demand from mutual fund managers. "It's simple supply and demand," he said. Similar to most of its Internet IPO peers, theglobe.com has yet to turn a profit. For the six months ended June 30, the company lost $5.8 million on revenues of $1.2 million, compared with losses of $767,000 on revenues of $208,000 for the same period a year earlier. In 1997, theglobe.com lost $3.6 million on revenues of $770,000. The company notes in its prospectus filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it expects to continue to lose money "for the foreseeable future." interactive.wsj.com

To: JBL who wrote (25979)	11/14/1998 5:27:00 AM
From: llamaphlegm	Respond to of 164687

November 13, 1998 Internet Mania Hits the Nasdaq As Parvenu Stocks Take Flight An INTERACTIVE JOURNAL News Roundup If there can be such a thing as parvenu Internet stocks, they're here -- and the ostentation of their market run-ups has left even those jaded by weeks of Internet mania shaking their heads. Technology stocks endured a roller-coaster day Friday, finishing down slightly as weakness for Dell Computer Corp. left the Nasdaq Composite Index with a slight loss, but some of the newest Internet stocks were flying high. Shares of Go2Net Inc., a metacrawler service for the Net and owner of the popular Silicon Investor (www.techstocks.com) stock-discussion site, surged $9.75 to $39.25, slipping off day's peaks that were nearly twice as high. The company late Thursday reported a fourth-quarter operating net profit of two cents a share, compared with a nine-cent-a-share loss in the year-ago quarter. "These days anything related to the Internet with a whiff of profitability is a pretty hot commodity," said Needham & Co.'s Dalton Chandler, the sole analyst following the stock. "They reached profitability two quarters ahead of my estimates." Mr. Chandler had expected the company to report a loss of five cents, excluding one-time items. Go2Net Chief Executive Russell Horowitz attributed the strong earnings to the company's technology and user-driven sites. Go2net's sites are based on a software model that allows them to basically run themselves, Mr. Chandler said. "Their sites are highly automated and low maintenance so they have a cost-structure advantage over other companies doing the same things," he said. "Because of that advantage, the company exceeded my revenue estimate for the quarter and that pretty much all fell to the bottom line." Go2Net spent about $1.3 million on sales and marketing in 1998 and has relied primarily on word of mouth to make its combined sites the 28th most trafficked on the Internet. Shares of Web-site developer EarthWeb Inc., meanwhile, took a step back, slipping $2.25 to $67 on Nasdaq. But don't cry for EarthWeb's newly minted rich -- after all, the shares climbed 41% Thursday and closed Wednesday at $48.6875 after pricing that same day at $14 a share. Then there was another Web site IPO, theglobe.com Inc., which priced at just $9 but shot as high as $97 before falling back to end at a still-remarkable $63.50 on Nasdaq. Don't forget Globix Corp., whose shares shot up $4.3125 to $11 as the company finally got a lift from the Internet-stock explosion. "The stock price hasn't appreciated much," compared with its Internet brethren, said ING Baring Furman Selz LLC analyst David Levy, "and now it's making up for lost time." The stock hovered around its 52-week low of $4 for much of October and November, until investors took notice Friday, the analyst said. Earlier Friday, the shares traded as high as $13.9375. A person familiar with the company said some investors are expecting Globix, a provider of equipment and training to Internet businesses, to issue a "major" announcement on Monday or early next week. "I've gotten calls from several people expecting a large announcement," said Globix spokesman Dan Vene. He could neither confirm nor deny the speculation, and declined to elaborate on what the announcement might be. What else was there? How about shares of Greg Manning Auctions Inc., which climbed $2.5313 to $13, building on a 102% gain Thursday. Jim Smith, chief financial officer of Greg Manning, had a pithy explanation for the frenzy Thursday: "The Internet seems to be the magic word." The only apparent break in the madness Friday came with the Nasdaq Stock Market's continued halt of shares of AvTel Communications Inc., a California company whose shares charged ahead an astonishing 1,278% Thursday, soaring 28 3/4 to 31 after the company said it was launching high-speed Internet access. After-market players continued to bid up shares of AvTel during late trading Thursday, prompting Nasdaq to halt the stock at 5:40 p.m. EST while it awaited additional information from the company. Late Friday, the Nasdaq Stock Market said trading in AvTel's shares will resume Monday morning. Many analysts have viewed such otherwordly run-ups -- particularly when they've come for the likes of K-tel International and Zapata -- as symbols of the wretched excesses of the bull market's obsession with highly speculative Internet stocks. Lise Buyer, an analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston, said Thursday that Internet stocks also tend to become supercharged on the tiniest bits of news because of their limited floats or amount of tradable stock. But not everyone is willing to write off the stock spikes as total lunacy. Jennifer Klein, an analyst at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., said Thursday that the opening an Internet business can present dramatic new opportunities for a company. "It lets them go from being a small retailer and a local auction house to being a more global entity," Ms. Klein said.

To: JBL who wrote (25979)	11/14/1998 6:15:00 AM
From: llamaphlegm	Respond to of 164687

November 16, 1998 It's Lunar, See? By Alan Abelson Thank you, Brian and Ronald Trochelmann; we're forever in your debt. So, who are Brian and Ronald Trochelmann? And what have they done to earn our eternal gratitude? The Messrs. Trochelmann are, as you may have astutely surmised, kin -- they are, in fact, brothers -- and hail from Atlanta. What they have done is nothing less than illuminate the most intriguing mystery of our time: the incredibly powerful attraction that the Internet exerts on investors. That attraction, long evident in the gravity-defying ascent of America Online, Amazon, Yahoo, et frenzied al., gained fresh and graphic demonstration last week with the public coming out of a couple of Internet ingenues called EarthWeb and theglobe.com. EarthWeb hit the air running and leaped to a virtual record with a 248% appreciation its first day of trading. Two sessions later, theglobe.com was offered at $9 a share, opened at $87 and climbed to $97. Before the Trochelmanns, we would have been totally baffled by these awesome flights into the stratosphere. But now it's all perfectly clear. For the Trochelmanns conceived of a truly inspired idea of reaping enormous fortunes by mining the moon. More specifically, according to federal prosecutors who indicted the pair in Manhattan last week, the Trochelmanns were seeking to cash in on the space craze rekindled by John Glenn's ancient mariner shtick, by peddling purported pieces of moon rock. And, the feds suggest, the enterprising brothers had every reason to expect to pocket millions from starry-eyed innocents and lunar aficionados (the latter are known, in cosmological circles, by the technical designation lunatics). The marvelous epiphany the Trochelmanns supplied us with is that the Internet stocks are fake pieces of moon rock. Just as the Trochelmanns divined that pieces of plain old rock would be transfigured into gemlike objects coruscating with a dreamy, romantic and irresistible gloss if they came from the moon, so Wall Street's clever fantasy merchants understood that mundane shares of stock, which wouldn't bring two cents as is, can fetch a fortune if cloaked in the gossamer raiments of the Internet. Whether rocks or stocks, the buyers think they're getting a piece of heaven. As to the counterparties in these out-of-this-world transactions, the literal Trochelmanns and the figurative Trochelmanns on the Street, it's fair to say they were simply mooning the public. Theglobe.com illustrates beautifully the speculative moonshine that's all the rage in this resuscitated bull market. The company has a business; namely, to help Internet (drumrolls, please!) users create their own World Wide Web sites. That business is not yet a big earner; in fact, in the first half of this year, theglobe.com lost $5.8 million on revenues of $1.2 million. Which suggests that the sure way for the company to show a profit might be to shut down operations. Part of the propulsion system vital to the successful liftoff of both EarthWeb and theglobe.com is the tiny number of shares floated in their IPOs, 2.1 million for the former, 3.1 million for the latter. Scarcity, obviously, is a great com.on and provides tremendous impetus to the stocks, once in orbit. Theglobe.com, like a number of Internet numbers, relies on advertisers for revenues. Whether it's rather unfocused sites can attract big-buck ads remains to be seen (translation: we're dubious). On this score, we recently received an interesting communique from privately owned Thomas Register, claiming that it has 5,000 corporate advertisers at its site, yet Infoseek reportedly has only 500. So why is Infoseek such a hot item? Or, for that matter, Yahoo or Excite? Maybe we ought to ask the Trochelmanns. Apart from its sheer delightful nuttiness, the action of the Internet stocks is the kind of feckless frolicking that often is a harbinger of at least a temporary interruption of a rambunctious bull move. And in fact, during the past couple of years, wild eruptions in the Internet sector such as we're happy witness to have been followed within a couple of weeks by a break in the overall market. Nice to know we don't have long to wait.