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

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (778)	1/1/1999 7:24:00 PM
From: Tunica Albuginea	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 41369

HI Chuzzlewit; I am new to this thread. Started getting into AOL few weeks ago at 78 with the Dell and Netscape announcements and started accumulating from there. I agree with everything you said and don't have the answers you seek. Let me digress and state that I will attempt to trade AOL all the way up (GG, I hope ) to $300+(take your pick), mostly for personal fun;I agree that perhaps buy and hold is better.But the fun in it is to try and beat conventional wisdom,(GG). I appreciate the insights of any would be traders on this thread. For now the game is as follows: -I will invest only in AOL (except for some minor positions in few other stocks); -Will put "all my eggs in one basket". -I will " watch the basket "and buy low, sell high,buy back, as much as my other full time job allows; which incidentally is why I need a few more eyes to watch this baby, and I think I got them in this thread. Hi also to my friends from PFE, Uncle Frank and Cosmo D. Good luck to you all, TA PS:My random ideas on AOL: A cyberspace COSTCO. In an upcoming deflationary world environment with falling pricing muscle," cheap is king ": the Internet, by eliminating the middlemen and assorted bribe-takers to do business.And AOL will put the seller and buyer together for cheap.A giant cyberspace volume discounter a la Wall Mart and Home Depot in the early stages. Give away a little PC too to do it for you??? With it's size AOL will muscle it's subcontractors to stand behind their product or else..... you are out...GG.No overhead...what did I leave out? I had to swallow hard to buy the high PE. But as Barron's learned the last 3 years, PEs are meaningless in a world wide of baby-boomers racing to do-it-yourself-e-trade-investing for old age. And finally, the coup de grace: good stocks are never cheap. TA

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (778)	1/1/1999 8:48:00 PM
From: LWolf	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 41369

Hi Chuzz... It seems to me that you have a financial model for 3 fronts in AOL: 1) the ISP context (monthly subscription charges) 2) the Shopping/Mall space advertisements (ad revenues) 3) the sales transaction royalties (I believe) 4) Let alone content and BRANDING (how to do establish a financial model for intellectual capital and branding?) AOL is becoming an American institution: e.g. "You've Got Mail" plus every family and student in America has been chatting for the last year with instant messengers. Soon AOL will be a global institution.... I'm just waiting for the commercials like Coke's and GE's.. ("it's the real thing"... and 'it brings good things to life").... <VBG> There isn't another company in e-commerce that has this combination... it's everything all the other want to be! No wonder AOL has been such a powerhouse, and S&P's decision to add them to the 500. Best wishes with AOL; going into '99 and the next millennium! Laura

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (778)	1/2/1999 5:03:00 PM
From: jhg_in_kc	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 41369

Chuzz, there are some good on line publications which are beginning to adress this. I know Red Herring is where I started once and there is an even better one whose name I have misplaced. They come up with metrics. Also Mary Meeker and the Morgan Stanley web page have a book on line that deals in how to value internet stocks. I didnt read it at the time because I didnt own any . Meeker was interviewed 2 weeks ago in Barron's' that article may have some leads. Also I copied this from a post by Marion on the Yahoo thread: <How AOL works: AOL charges merchants large sums to be on AOL. These are contracts for a year or more. AOL also usually receives a percentage of the revenue from the sales. Most of the stores are large well known names, ( JC Penney, FAO Schwartz, Hickory Farms, etc.) In some cases they have been given exclusive rights. Barnes and Noble for instance has exclusive rights to be the only bookseller on AOL.(Amazon has exclusive for the AOL.Com web site) Barnes and Noble paid 40 million dollars for that over 4 years. AOL guarantees all the products sold on their service. How Yahoo shopping works: Anyone can set up a store on Yahoo. It costs 100 to 300 dollars a month. There is no time contract, and there is no commissions paid to Yahoo. This has attracted a lot of small "mom and pop " type stores. Some selling odd and unusual items. You can visit the stores individually or you can do searches using Yahoo's search. So if you search for an item and more than one store carries it, all of those item appear, just like if you were doing a regular web search. Yahoo doesn't guarantee any of the items and has a disclaimer <<Yahoo! expressly disclaims any responsibility or liability for any damage, loss or injury arising out of: •for the activities of any merchant; •the goods or services offered or the content displayed by or in any store; •for any loss or injury resulting from your access or inability to access any store; or •arising out of your purchase or use of the goods or services of any store. >> Yahoo has no large name stores or any large agreements for revenue sharing. They presently have about 2,700 stores. AOL has a little over a hundred. At the rate of 300 per store, Yahoo would gross around 2.5 million for a quarter which is 10 million a year or what Barnes and Noble pays AOL in a year. There is also a limit to how many stores Yahoo would be able to have on their site, before it would become cluttered, and ineffective to the merchant selling. Yahoo is also now not in a position to offer any exclusive deals or revenue programs. They are also competing with other sites that offer the same set up. You can have a store on Snap for 49 dollars a month ( its free if you sell 10 items or less). The low cost of these stores might attract some of the less desirable merchants too.