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Strategies & Market Trends : Trader J's Inner Circle -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BANCHEE who wrote (6147)	1/26/1999 11:14:00 PM
From: Triffin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 56535

NET/IPO.......DLIA More 'press' for DLIA... Jan 26, 1999 FOOL PLATE SPECIAL An Investment Opinion by Alex Schay dELiAs, Is like.. You Know, Trading Higher Last night, dELiAs Inc. (NASDAQ:DLIA - news) , a direct marketer of teen apparel, announced that its Internet subsidiary, iTurf Inc., had filed a registration statement with the SEC -- laying the groundwork for an initial public offering. This morning, shares of the teen titan like, you know, went up $1 5/8 to $16 11/16, which was understandably a smaller percentage gain than the 26% that ocurred at the beginning of the year when dELIAs initially announced its intention to sell a stake in its Internet unit to the public. dELiAs is definitely way ahead of the pack in terms of online teen marketing, thanks in part to its early development of gURL.com -- a website dedicated to teenage girls. The firm has expanded its Net presence to six sites since turning on its main site last May, and attendance is soaring (800,000 to 22 million page impressions at iTurf from February to December of last year). The teen market is huge, as our own Louis Corrigan noted in this year's Industry Focus, "The broad 'teen' market in the U.S. is being driven by the Baby Boomers' baby boom. According to the Census Bureau, the number of 10- to 19-year-olds reached a 15-year low of 35.2 million in 1992, but it's been expanding ever since. This segment of the population will reach 40 million by 2000 and will continue growing at twice the rate of the overall population through 2010. Also, what's often called 'Generation Y' includes folks in the 10- to 24-year-old age bracket. This group will increase in number from 56.2 million in 1998 to 63.1 million in 2010." With disposable income estimates in the range between $120 and $278 billion, the group is also slapping down some cash. Indeed, online revenue is expected to account for about 4% of dELIAs revenues ($6 million) for its current year ending this month. iTUrf reported net income of $52,000 for the first nine months of the fiscal year off of $1.9 million in sales -- which represented a 22-fold increase year over year (the firm is hoping to merely double sales in calendar 1999). Other Internet retailers, with customer lists that ultimately spend less per head, are being valued in the $500 -$3000 market cap/per customer range, suggesting a valuation between $50 to $100 million for the offering. Beyond timing the offering for a receptive market, distributing shares now will allow the company to fund its Internet expansion with cash that won't have to be taken away from the pile dedicated to its core retail growth. It is unclear whether or not the Internet brand has expanded dELiAs catalog operations, but it certainly lends a hip cachet to the retail concept. Jim in CT..My 14 year old daughter likes their stuff but says Abercrombie is the 'coolest'