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Technology Stocks : Roaring Internet Stocks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jetta who wrote (793)	1/11/1999 2:43:00 PM
From: Travis McGee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1530

BAGELS ANY ONE? BAGL news of e-commerce. 2:28 whats next? :-)

To: Jetta who wrote (793)	1/11/1999 2:50:00 PM
From: Trooper	Respond to of 1530

Jetta and all. Read this about VTCO. Someone left it on one of the other threads. I'm buying more! It's only a matter of time before it pops!!!! Virtual Technology not soaring with the others Eric Wieffering / Star Tribune Like every Internet company executive, Ken Israel knows that few things can boost a stock price like a well-timed press release. For example, a month ago shares of New Hope-based Navarre Inc. tripled in three days after the company said it would spin off its NetRadio subsidiary. Then, in late December, shares of Phoenix-based SkyMall Inc. soared as high as $48, more than 10 times the price a week earlier, after it said Internet sales had risen 600 percent, to $2.1 million. So this week, with investor demand pushing many Internet shares to stratospheric highs, Israel announced Virtual Technology Corporation's fourth-quarter sales growth -- even though the quarter doesn't end until Jan. 31. "I felt I had to do it because my competitors were announcing their numbers and everyone was asking what mine were," said Israel, Virtual Technology's chairman. Investors yawned and shares of Virtual Technology, the Minneapolis online seller of high-end computing products, remained stuck at under $4. "It's frustrating," Israel said Friday. Indeed. Investor demand for Internet stocks has continued unabated in 1999, and they've bid up shares of established but money-losing online retailers such as Amazon.com. On Friday, Digital River, Ebay and Amazon.com reached 52-week intraday highs before retreating. Still, many stocks have posted significant gains in the first week of 1999. But Israel's experience proves that not all companies are benefiting from .com mania. Virtual Technology, meanwhile, is off 12.1 percent in the new year. Part of the company's problem, doubtless, is that Virtual Technology has some visibility problems. It sells to technophiles, not the general public. It's traded on the local over-the-counter market, which also limits its availability, and the company will not file its first earnings report with the Securities and Exchange Commission until next week. But the company had sales of $3 million in the nine months ended Oct. 31, and it has an average daily float of 4 million shares. Sure, it's losing money, but that hasn't deterred investors from taking the plunge with other fledgling Web companies. And while Virtual Technology may be ignored, it is not alone. On Thursday, Sportsman's Guide Inc., a South St. Paul-based catalog retailer, announced that it had sold $1 million worth of goods on its Web site in the last six months of 1998. The company, which had total sales of $128.1 million in 1997, said fourth-quarter Web sales amounted to 1.5 percent of its total. Normally, that kind of news would send a company's stock soaring. But shares of Sportsman's Guide rose a modest 7.8 percent on the news. Company officials did not return calls. Meanwhile, Israel admits he has done every thing he can to attract attention. He's announced partnerships with leading software providers. He's launched a marketing relationship with Microsoft. He's made a major acquisition, and last week he went courting analysts on Wall Street, where he sketched out plans to become the first profitable online computer reseller. But, since he's not profitable yet and because his competitors are larger, the analysts weren't impressed. "They said, 'That's it? Don't you have anything else?' " © Copyright 1999 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.