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Technology Stocks : America On-Line (AOL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jorge who wrote (434)	12/30/1998 11:22:00 PM
From: cuemaster	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 41369

its only the beginnin, Yahoo! News Business Headlines Wednesday December 30 10:22 PM ET AOL Hears Cash Register Ringing On Christmas NEW YORK (Reuters) - America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news) Wednesday said that on Christmas day, a record number of people gave themselves an AOL subscription, apparently to go along with personal computers they received as gifts for Christmas. AOL declined to divulge that Christmas day total, but overall, the company saw a subscription spike in the last 48 days of over 1 million that brought its total customer base to 15 million, up from a mere 1 million back in Aug. 1994. ''People got PCs as a holiday gift and they opened their computers and signed on AOL,'' a company spokeswoman told Reuters. ''This is the first time when we saw an actual spike in sign-ups on Christmas day.'' Wall Street analysts are also convinced that the strong PC holiday sales is in fact a key factor driving the AOL surge. As an increasing number of people becoming PC owners, the next thing they are doing is ''getting connected to the Internet,'' said Warburg Dillon Read analyst Michael Wallace. That is where America Online comes into play being the world's No. 1 Internet providing service, he said. Another factor hiking demand for America Online is the free publicity from the movie ''You've Got Mail,'' said Scott Appleby, an analyst with ABN AMRO. ''The movie is a billboard for AOL,'' Appleby said. He expects the company to continue its stellar growth in 1999. The AOL spokeswoman said the Christmas total ''was better than twice the number that signed up on any average day during this quarter.'' Year earlier comparisons weren't disclosed and were not immediately available, she added. Over 4 million customers have already signed up with America Online during 1998, she noted. On average 3 million subscribers join America Online on an annual basis, according to Wallace of Warburg Dillon Read. Ahead of the news, stock of America Online, one of the bellweather technology high-flyers that was recently added to the blue-chip Standard & Poor's 500 index, fell $5.25 to $148. The stock has been on a roll amid the recent market frenzy for Internet stocks, rising over 60 percent this month alone. America Online operates two worldwide Internet online services: America Online, with more than 15 million members; and CompuServe, which had about 2 million members as of November 12. Earlier Stories America Online Membership Climbs To 15 Mln (December 30)

To: Jorge who wrote (434)	12/30/1998 11:31:00 PM
From: larry	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 41369

I trade AOL in both ways. Love the stock, dislike the company, hate its product (it sucks and I have no desire to use it anyway). However, you don't need to have the best product to dominate the market. The company might indeed have good (not unlimited) upside potential but the stock price is running ahead of itself. 99 might indeed prove to be a super exciting year for stock market gamblers (I won't call these traders investors since nearly all of them are not much different from gamblers in Vegas). It will go either way. I mean, either DOW popping toward 11 k or losing ground to 8 k by year end. If retail and Wall Street gamblers all wish to believe the valuation model presented by the internet stocks, sky is the limit and we should see issues like MSFT, CSCO spotting trailing PE between 100-150. However, if somehow everyone suddenly realizes that traditional valuation still means something, we will see a nice retreat in the market. Corporate profits won't matter that much, IMHO. It's just an excuse for sellers to lock in profits. Greed or fear will decide the direction and gains of the market. L!