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Microcap & Penny Stocks : IATV - ACTV Interactive Television -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: art slott who wrote (4471)	2/22/1999 5:09:00 PM
From: JackSkip	Respond to of 4748

All, "A must read" 2/19/1999 Malone's garden grows Aftermath of AT&T/TCI merger leaves Liberty with debt-free leverage and $9 billion in cash With the AT&T-TCI merger cleared for takeoff, John Malone is poised to pilot a Liberty Media Corp. that's awash in cash and largely unburdened by debt. For a TCI-era Malone, a debt-free bankroll was a bad thing. Historically, he's preferred to borrow, largely for the tax benefit. Now, however, the rules have changed for a merger-liberated Malone and Liberty. "We'll be starting life with $9 billion of cash," says Malone. "The challenge is how to deploy that $9 billion and take the leverage up in a way that enhances the growth rate and quality of the [Liberty] portfolio. We'll be opportunistic--take a sow-a-few-seeds, tend-the-garden approach. "On leverage, it's all a target of opportunity," he says. "If the stock is trading at 60% of breakup value, I'd say leverage the shit out of it and buy stock ... . A lot of it is financial engineering--hedge positions in which you have big economics, invest in opportunities." Liberty's market capitalization is roughly $33 billion, and immediately post-merger it will have 2.5 billion newly issued shares of stock--about $5.5 billion in cash and the ability to obtain up to $8 billion in debt. The additional $3.5 billion in cash, subject to market fluctuations, will come from the sale of Liberty's Sprint PCS stake, a condition imposed by the Justice Department. But don't look for Liberty to go on a big-bucks spending spree, says Malone: "When equity markets are high, it's not a great time to buy something big with cash. "In the technology world, you involve yourself in what you think are strong ideas. Some work out, some don't. The typical venture capital investment is a couple million bucks. Only when you have what you think is a home run do you start pouring capital in. Liberty is a great environment for this. Because of our financial position, there's not much we don't get to see." Liberty will focus on maintaining or improving its 20%-25% growth rate, pumping up existing Liberty investments that the Malone-Dob Bennett-Gary Howard management team considers attractive, and looking for the next At Home, Teleport, or USA Networks. E-commerce, interactive advertising, new programming--those are among opportunities Liberty will explore. E-commerce is particularly attractive, says Malone, because it "cuts across the Web-TV boundary better than other applications." What's out? "The one thing I won't let these guys invest in is a major studio," says Malone. "We tried making pictures once, and they were awful. I don't mind having affiliate companies do that. But in terms of Dob being Cecil B. DeMille, don't count on it."

To: art slott who wrote (4471)	2/22/1999 5:20:00 PM
From: JackSkip	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4748

"More interesting reading" Date Posted: 2/19/1999 Fox Sports Net's NAB '99 Shopping List Mark Coleman, vice president of technical operations With its 22 regional channels reaching 62 million homes, Fox Sports Net continues to expand. Already the sports cable network has outgrown its current Los Angeles and Houston facilities and is in the midst of a major overhaul of both of its operations centers to help support future growth. While Fox has already bought some major equipment for the facilities, Fox Sports Net's Vice President of Technical Operations, Mark Coleman, will have his hands full at this year's NAB. The network is planning to move into a new Los Angeles master control center by September 1999 and will be expanding its Houston operation, which is expected to be up and running by December. Communications Engineering, Inc., a Newington, Va.-based systems integration firm, is building both facilities. The two upgraded plants are 601 serial digital component and are based around Sony's Betacam SX format and Tektronix 256x256 routing. They will house all of the master control operations for Fox Sports Net and its regional cable channels, as well as for FX. Fox Sports Net's new Los Angeles site is around the corner from TCI's National Digital Television Center (NDTC). Since it has a strategic partnership with TCI/Liberty, the sports network plans to move its transmission services from Globecast to NDTC. Coleman says he hopes to create a seamless interface between the two locations and with its New York partner, Rainbow Media Holdings. Fox Liberty owns 50% of Rainbow Sports, which co-manages several of Fox Sports Net's regional networks. "We would like to be able to have a virtual network where we could, through our Louth and our HP file servers, call up Los Angeles and Houston and have [the video file] appear at any location," says Coleman. "We're also looking to work with some of our providers like HP," he adds, "to see how far they have come in their development of WAN connections for our file server technology." This year Fox Sports Net has been rolling out its NDS compression system for satellite delivery to cable headends. The headends are equipped with Wegener MPEG-2 based integrated receiver decoders (IRDs). "Now that we are having all of our product in the digital domain, we would like to be able to look for efficient ways to transport our product across the country for backhaul, says Coleman. "We will also be looking at delivery systems, whether across land line or satellite, and [using the] efficiencies of the MPEG compression system." Compression, he says, has helped the network spend "the right amount of money in the right place." Since it began using the NDS 8:1 compression system, Coleman says, Fox Sports Net has turned back seven transponders, and plans to turn back even more transponders this year. Fox Sports Net currently shares 20 transponders with FX and other Fox/Liberty ventures. Coleman also says he will be looking for digital backhaul services and is interested in seeing what MCI and AT&T have to offer. The network currently uses Vyvx for analog backhaul for live events. Fox Sports Net uses National Mobile Television's trucks for production. Coleman says he will be looking to see if the company has added anything new to its production units. Fox Sports also wants to improve its on-air look by adding the latest in broadcast graphics software. "We use a fair amount of Avid Technology [nonlinear editors], so we need to see how far along they are and to see if there are any new developments in that area," says Coleman. He will also be looking for software systems that can run regional sports information in the form of a ticker, "to give it that regional flavor." High definition is not among Fox Sports Net's near-term goals. "As far as I can tell, it's not in our foreseeable future," Coleman says. "That's not to say that we won't pick the right time and place to dabble in it." The network will continue to "watch the HD phenomenon," he quickly adds, and upgrade its services whenever the opportunity arises. "With each move that we make, whether it's new talent or adding new programming, it raises the bar," adds a Fox Sports representative familiar with the cable channel's agenda. We've got to have the technological capacity to meet and exceed what cable operators as well as our viewers are expecting."

To: art slott who wrote (4471)	2/23/1999 11:40:00 AM
From: Ron Harvey	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4748

<<I'll play it safe and say $20 by Fall. But I'm not as knowledgable as page 123.>> You have no idea (nor do I) where the self-interest of this anonymous poster lies. He could well be a stock-market professional who's touted this stock to customers and now wants to gull less experienced internet investors with hyperbolic sugarplum dreams into expecting outrageously high gains so he and his own people will have buyers to sell to. This isn't uncommon. I'd count him as knowledgeable only if he's made five or six public forecasts like this with other small caps and he's been right more than half the time. (Bet you that when his forecast fails, like end-of-the-worlders who take to caves, he just moves his date up. And not too modestly.) Finally, no prediction about any stock is "safe." If you read enough small-stock message boards you'd see more confident forecasts shot down than German bombers during the Battle of Britain. Better, I think, than plucking predictions from one's imagination is to assess the risk/reward ratio based on what makes stocks move. With IATV (and at the current price) I think the reward is more promising than the threat of loss. And the current trading looks excellent. But I've been trading stocks for too long to suppose that my guess at an unknown future price has more or less worth than anyone else's. (However, if a functioning crystal ball showed this stock to be trading at 8 1/4 by Xmas, a profit of over 100K would make me a happy camper. And should it be higher, well, great, I'll take the gravy, too.)