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Strategies & Market Trends : Z Best Place to Talk Stocks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Susan Saline who wrote (18322)	1/8/1999 11:47:00 AM
From: Redhook	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 53068

If you like INSP look at BNYN: Check out the chart. This could double next week. I bought some at 15. Banyan Up 36% On Rumors Of Switchboard Unit's IPO Dow Jones Newswires By Maria V. Georgianis NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Banyan Systems Inc. (BNYN) jumped 35.7% Thursday on speculation that it would spin off its Switchboard Inc. Internet subsidiary in an initial public offering as early as the first quarter, market sources said. Switchboard is the No. 1 white and yellow pages directory service on the Internet, according to Media Matrix, a service that measures Internet traffic. The closest competitor to the unit is Infospace.com Inc., (INSP), a provider of Internet directories, classified ads, news and other services to online consumers. Infospace.com went public Dec. 15 at 15 and hit a high of 52 Dec. 28. The stock closed Thursday at 38 1/2. Banyan officials didn't immediately return calls for comment. Burnham Securities analyst Suzanne Chase said Banyan has said it wants to provide its shareholders with value for the Switchboard unit. The company said it was considering alternatives such as selling the unit or an initial public offering, but it never specified a time frame, Chase said. In Nasdaq trading, Banyan closed up 3 3/4, or 35.7%, at 14 1/4, on volume of 4.4 million compared to average daily volume of 730,700. Burnham's Chase said she expects Banyan to earn 15 cents a share on revenue of $95 million in 1999. Last year, the company earned 5 cents a share on revenue of $75 million, she said. Most of Banyan's revenue comes from networking services and software. Chase said she expects Banyan to post $82 million in revenue in its networking business this year and $13 million in revenue from its Switchboard unit. In 1998, Chase estimated that the networking business logged revenue of $68 million and the Switchboard unit had revenue of $7 million. A broker requesting anonymity said the value of Banyan's Switchboard unit isn't recognized in the stock. If Banyan were to be accorded InfoSpace's market value of $735 million, Banyan should be trading at 33, he said. The broker estimated that Banyan's base business of networking products and services is worth another 6 to 7. Chase said it would make sense for Banyan to spin off its Switchboard unit as soon as possible, given the current market valuations of the Internet sector. Banyan's Switchboard unit isn't profitable. The company is expected to invest $3 million to $4 million in the unit this year, Chase said. Switchboard has more than 120 million people and business listings in its directory. It also provides online directory services for the Alta Vista search engine, GeoCities (GCTY), a provider of personal Web site communities. and Bell Atlantic Corp. (BEL) Big Yellow directory site.