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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Bid.com International (BIDS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Goldbug Guru who wrote (2598)	12/1/1998 6:12:00 PM
From: Goldbug Guru	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37507

December 1, 1998 Toronto Stock Market Relieved investors send Toronto stocks higher TORONTO, Dec. 1 (Reuters) - Investors heaved a sigh of relief that sent Toronto's stock market much higher on Tuesday, after Monday's Quebec election failed to give the separatist Parti Quebecois party as strong a majority as had been feared. The Toronto Stock Exchange's main 300 Composite Index climbed 113.27 points or 1.8 percent to close at 6457.14. Despite the benchmark index's gains, declining issues beat out advancing ones 543 to 479 on the broader market. Another 262 stocks closed steady. In New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 16.99 points to 9133.54. Toronto opened weaker, then flipped into positive turf by midday. "It was a bullish reversal," said Katherine Beattie, analyst at Standard and Poor's MMS International. "It wasn't as bad as feared....The PQ didn't win by a huge margin and we had a relief rally." The incumbent PQ won a majority, with 75 seats in the 125-seat provincial legislature, to 48 for the opposition Liberals. But the Liberals won the popular vote by one percentage point. Fred Ketchen, ScotiaMcLeod's director of equity trading, attributed some of the gains to the surprise Quebec election numbers. "I think our market has underperformed (New York). There is reasonable value out here and now I think some of the recognition is starting to show up now." Beattie added that the stock exchange was set to reveal a new index late on Tuesday, the S&P/TSE 60 Index, which meant fund managers were snapping up the relevant issues ahead of the announcement. "The TSE 60 will be unveiled tonight and the stocks in that got a boost." All 14 sub-groups but one, oil and gas, tracked upward. The oil sector slipped as producers have failed to take fresh action to relieve a severe glut. Gains were led by the TSE 300's heavily weighted financial services sector, which rose 3.5 percent. The sector suffered recent losses. In the bank group, Royal Bank of Canada was up C$2.50 to C$78 and Toronto-Dominion Bank rose C$2.40 to C$53.75. Financial services was followed by 2-percent jumps in transportation, media and consumer products. Bid.Com International Inc. topped the most actives group again, as it has for most days in the past two weeks. Stock in the online auctioneer slipped C$0.24 to C$4.23 following a scorching rally recently. Corel shares rose C$0.03 to C$3.98 after announcing it settled a lawsuit with former Hollywood movie queen Hedy Lamarr. The suit alleged the software maker had misappropriated her image by slapping a software-created likeness on a product's packaging. Corel did not disclose the terms. ($1=$1.53 Canadian)

To: Goldbug Guru who wrote (2598)	12/1/1998 6:50:00 PM
From: Goldbug Guru	Respond to of 37507

Xoom.com Revs Up for Offering By Suzanne Galante SAN FRANCISCO – The stars are lining up for a felicitous IPO for Xoom.com. Internet start-up Xoom.com runs an online community, but unlike its competitors TheGlobe.com and GeoCities, it derives most of its revenue from e-commerce instead of ads. Internet start-up? Online community? E-commerce? These are the words that drive some investors mad with passion. And don't overlook the IPO's excellent timing. In mid-December, San Francisco-based Xoom.com is expected to offer 3 million shares at $9 to $11 a share. That places Xoom.com squarely on the coattails of hot debuts from EarthWeb and TheGlobe.com, both of which closed several times above their offering prices of their first days of trading. It also helps that Bear Stearns, which served as underwriter on both EarthWeb and TheGlobe.com, is Xoom.com's lead underwriter. "TheGlobe.com couldn't have happened without EarthWeb, and EarthWeb couldn't have happened without the buying frenzy the week before," says David Menlow, president of the IPO Financial Network. "Right now momentum is such that it's running like a smoothly oiled machine. And that will take any Internet stock with it." The IPO mania has been especially remarkable given that other industries have had trouble floating new issues. "EarthWeb and TheGlobe were so successful, and that creates a lot more optimism about where you can get deals done," says Jim Feuille, head of investment banking at Volpe Brown Whelan. Xoom.com, as one of the few Internet IPOs in the pipeline, has an advantage over others. Xoom.com boasted the 13th biggest Web audience in September, according to Media Metrix. Xoom.com calls itself a direct-marketing company because it attracts members to its community site with a variety of free services, including home pages, e-mail, chat rooms, software libraries and online greeting cards. The catch is that upon registering, members agree to receive periodic offers of products and services via e-mail. But more than being a copycat to TheGlobe, GeoCities or Lycos subsidiary Tripod, Xoom.com has a relatively large membership of 4.6 million. That's 59 percent more than GeoCities' 2.9 million members and 130 percent more than TheGlobe's 2 million members. The biggest difference between Xoom.com and other online communities is also Xoom.com's biggest edge: Sixty-nine percent of its revenue so far this year has come from online sales, with only 20 percent from advertising. Ad sales made up about 92 percent of revenue for GeoCities and 89 percent for TheGlobe.com for the quarter ended in September. That gets back to Xoom.com's excellent timing. Internet stocks, especially those engaged in e-commerce, have also been soaring in recent weeks. Amazon.com, for example, has risen 65 percent to 208 since it launched its video and gift stores last Tuesday. Onsale has gained 254 percent in the past three weeks, Egghead.com gained 150 percent in that same period, while CDnow gained 94 percent. Jupiter Communications has predicted that $2.3 billion will be spent online this holiday season and $12 billion in 1999. While other online communities are moving toward online sales to boost revenues from members, Xoom.com has used e-commerce as part of its business model, says Edward Meehan, a managing director at Legg Mason. As the company points out in its SEC filing, there are plenty of risks. Of the 81 pages in Xoom.com's most recent prospectus, 21 pages were devoted to risks: international expansion (29 percent of revenue comes from overseas), a brief history (Xoom.com was founded in April 1996) and looming regulatory issues such as Net sales taxes and customer-privacy protections. And while investors are often willing to stomach such risks, they face a more immediate risk in the volatility of Net IPOs. On its first day of trading, TheGlobe rose as high as 97, or 978 percent above its offering price. The next day it fell to 45. Most of those who lost money on day two were small investors. "The individual investor is at the disadvantage," says Meehan. Xoom.com's strength in membership numbers and e-commerce revenue will boost the chances that it will remain standing after the bloom falls off other Internet stocks. "People will be sifting through the remains of this [Internet run] and making a value judgment," says Menlow. But Xoom's size and business model "bode well for the stock," he says. Suzanne Galante writes for TheStreet.com, an editorial partner of The Industry Standard.