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To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (36372)1/24/1999 3:23:00 PM
From: H James Morris  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 164684
 
Michelle, I forgot one other difference. I went to Stanford only because they could spell. Isn't the University of California @ Berkeley, still spelled the same?
Ps
Great school. Bad speller's.



To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (36372)1/24/1999 7:54:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph  Respond to of 164684
 
The Internet Capitalist
SG Cowen Internet Research
21
and Internet tools software to really hit stride.
Stay tuned.
Delta Embraces, No, Bear Hugs The Internet
Though we often preach aggressiveness to
corporate executives who are trying to
determine their Internet strategy, more often
than not, their reflexive response has been
“wait and see”. This is the reason we were so
surprised by Delta Airlines moves this past
week; Delta Air Lines announced that it is
imposing a $1, one-way surcharge on domestic
tickets purchased through travel agents, but
not on tickets purchased directly over its Web
site. We are big believers in the power of
incentives to motivate, and we've now got one
of the most powerful motivators around
shaking up the airline industry and causing,
you guessed it, some serious disintermediation
in this industry's value chain. Goodbye travel
agents.
Though Delta suggested officially that it
needed to cover rising ticket distribution costs
(which have increased to $1 billion in 1998)
and reservation system booking fees (which
have increased 280% since 1990), the real
reason, of course is to weaken (and eventually
eliminate) the role travel agents in the
industry. The rationale is patently obvious to
fans of industry value chains: the more
inefficiency Delta can drive out of the process
of flying people to and fro, the more margin
Delta can absorb from the industry.
Unsurprisingly, United Airlines announced
that it, too, was considering such a move,
though we're hard pressed to imagine a
scenario in which any airline (even regionals)
would not follow this path, since even $1 per
ticket differences can result in a measurable
comparative advantage (the only advantage
that matters). We'll be keeping a close watch
on how quickly the rest of the industry turns.
Valuation Watch
The Pause That Refreshes?
The ongoing deflation in the Internet sector
(Yahoo! and Amazon are off nearly 50% in the
last two weeks) got us to thinking about
whether or not all those institutional clients
who don't yet have exposure to the Internet
sector were telling the truth when they said
they were waiting for the stocks to “come back
to earth”. Well, sea level, dead ahead. The
question we think, is not “are these stocks
going to zero?” (we think we're seeing too
many “I told you so's” in the press for this to
be a real Internet bear market), but rather, at
what point does it make sense to think about
getting some exposure to these hyper-growers?
In the forest vs. trees game, however, it seems
the trees have made a nice comeback and have
eked out a small lead over the forest. Though
a healthy shake-out is probably in all of our
best interests in this sector (we just wish there
would be a better separation of the wheat from
the chaff), we think it's important to keep view
of the forest these days (that we're still in the
early innings of this game) and try to block out
the relatively unimportant trees (that
December's upside surprises may not be as
huge as whisper numbers suggested).
To this end, we'll share a telling anecdote from
way back in 1994, when we had the pleasure of
covering Microsoft. In a conversation with a
smart buy-sider about how many units of
Windows 95 would ship in the first quarter
after it availability, she got stuck on whether it
would be something like X or .75X. We spoke
at length about the importance of multi-tasking,
about the new serial bus features,
about various consumer-focused functions,
and about corporate and OEM demand. At the
end of the day, she couldn't get comfortable
with all of these things and she didn't buy the
stock.
Of course, history now shines its cruel light on
that decision, thanks to Microsoft's 1100%