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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. Davies who wrote (4440)	1/19/1999 7:28:00 AM
From: FR1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Hard to figure the final effect. I went to MSN Investor and looked up XCIT. Mentioned were: 1) It is the #2 search engine after YHOO 2) Financial software company Intuit owns 13% of the company; America Online, about 12%; and Excite directors Vinod Khosla and Geoffrey Yang, about 22% combined. 3) In 1998 ..... In an effort to pass Yahoo! as the #1 Internet browser, Excite teamed with Netscape to create a co-branded search engine for the Internet software provider's Netcenter Web site. I thought AOL/Netscape was the enemy! Basically, ATHM is going directly after AOL. Go figure... Xcit Revenue - Quarterly Results ($ Millions) FY (12/98) FY (12/97) FY (12/96) 1st Qtr 23.0 7.5 1.1 2nd Qtr 33.0 9.5 2.1 3rd Qtr 44.0 14.4 4.0 4th Qtr NA 18.8 6.5 Total 100.0 50.2 13.7 Earnings Per Share - Quarterly Results FY (12/98) FY (12/97) FY (12/96) 1st Qtr $-0.17 $-0.36 $-0.18 2nd Qtr $-1.72 $-0.32 $-0.32 3rd Qtr $-0.14 $-0.19 $-0.39 4th Qtr NA $-0.23 $-0.53 Total $-2.03 $-1.10 $-1.42 Basically, they are growing by about 100%/year and still losing money but closing the gap fast. It sounds like a good deal to me. High flying search engines are like real estate - they don't make them anymore. Anybody can buy software from inktoma and be a search engine but everybody knows there are only about 5 of them: YHOO, XCIT, SEEK, LCOS, Hot Bot. The public doesn't really want/need anymore. 5 general search engines are enough. The only way you can get in this race is to buy one. Why does ATHM need one? Because they want to taylor a major search engine to high speed multimedia delivery. The possibilities are endless. This is central to ATHMs offering now that they have decided to be "more than just a dumb pipe." Question - does this may dilute the ownership position of T somewhat?

To: E. Davies who wrote (4440)	1/19/1999 9:15:00 AM
From: RocketMan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

$6+B!?! ATHM had better go out and start signing up some subscribers in a hurry! This merger, other than the price, is good for ATHM in that it provides penetration and content, the perception of which ATHM had been sadly lacking. However, I worry about ATHM being so closely tied to cable rather than to bandwidth. I don't care how many more bits you can push across cable vs copper, ATHM's "bits x subscribers" factor will not compete with AOL's for another 2-3 years. Even if AOL does not get a cable deal for a while, DSL is not exactly snail pace. And about cable's growth, let's see, wasn't cable TV supposed to doom broadcast TV to the waste bin of history about 15 years ago? Or was that 20? Now it is supposed to do the same to dialup service. In spite of my skepticism, I hope that ATHM and AOL are wildly successful in the next couple of years, as I am invested in both.