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To: Ben Black who wrote (31091)	12/25/1998 8:58:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

TEL-SAVE TO SHORT-SELLERS: YOU WIN AILING TEL-SAVE.COM, long the target of short-sellers, launched a war on the shorts earlier this year with a ruinously expensive, $281 million buyback. The short squeeze hasn't worked: Fully a third of the company's remaining shares are still shorted. And the stock has slipped 63% from its February high, to 10 1/2. Now, new CEO Gabriel Battista says he's throwing in the towel. Because the upstart long-distance company needs the capital, he is ending the campaign that resulted in the purchase of 16 million of the 65 million shares outstanding. ''Let the shorts take care of themselves,'' says Battista, who previously headed Internet company Network Solutions. ''We have to get our numbers up.'' True. Tel-Save has been in the red both this year and last. By Sept. 30, available cash had dropped to a perilous $84 million, from $538 million at yearend 1997. One reason: the financial drain from its 1997 $100 million ad deal with America Online. Another is the thin margins Tel-Save makes on its specialty, cut-rate phone calls. Guess that buyback strategy was about as helpful as a millstone. By Larry Light EDITED BY ROBERT McNATT