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Technology Stocks : DRIV (DIGITAL RIVER). Get in on internet IPO. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David Browning who wrote (1167)	3/1/1999 9:59:00 AM
From: Mr. Miller	Respond to of 3198

Thanks to Browning and Duke for the additional perspective. Someone was kind enough to post, on the YHOO board, this from theStreet.com: A Random Walk at the Robbie Stephens Conference By Andrew Stern Special to TheStreet.com 2/28/99 2:11 PM ET SAN FRANCISCO -- Attending a conference like the BancBoston Robertson Stephens Technology '99 Conference is like going to a candy store, without knowing which candies to buy. There were more than 300 presenting companies spread over four days, each day starting at eight and finishing at five. Four companies present every half-hour, each having exactly 25 minutes to address the crowd. Presenters, usually CEOs or CFOs, face an NBA-like clock that, when it reaches zero, emits beeps that sound much like garbage trucks backing up. How to decide which companies to hear? I looked at the program and decided I did not want to hear the big companies like Cisco (CSCO:Nasdaq), Sun Microsystems (SUNW:Nasdaq), Microsoft (MSFT:Nasdaq) and America Online (AOL:NYSE). They go to these meetings all the time; and if they had something new to say, I would quickly hear about it anyway. I decided to learn more about some of the smaller, less well known companies. I heard CheckFree Holdings (CKFR:Nasdaq) and liked what they had to say: an unlimited future in electronic check processing on the Internet. But when I asked an analyst who was sitting next to me about the company, he said it wasn't a good buy because Microsoft might enter the business. Checkfree CEO Peter Kight had said that Microsoft might enter the business, but hadn't yet processed one transaction. I then heard E*Trade's (EGRP:Nasdaq) glitzy presentation, then one from Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch's (PRGN:Nasdaq) young CEO, who showed lots of charts. He said you could buy tickets for a seat at a basketball game on their site, and with virtual-reality technology, you would be able to preview the view from the seat, but that was still, err, in the lab. As I sipped a cup of coffee between sessions, a bunch of analysts next to me said they all had to hear Peregrine Systems (PRGN:Nasdaq), a hot company that offers "IT infrastructure management solutions." The room was overflowing, the charts pointed up (they all do, of course). I tried hard to understand what the company does, but CEO Stephen Gardner seemed to speak in another language: Large company managers were "addicted to infrastructure," and needed Peregrine's enterprise infrastructure management application software. It was only after he told us that the FBI was using this software, that I began to listen more carefully, deciding I'd really better learn more about this company. ..... By now I was too tired to move, so I decided to stay for the next presentation, a company with the appealing name of Digital River (DRIV:Nasdaq). Suddenly there was a huge rush of people entering the room, and I was glad I had a seat. The company's stock had a 52-week range between 5 and 61 3/8, closing at 38 1/2 Friday. Digital River makes it possible to download software on the Web directly onto a computer. Now this is something I could understand. Standing not far from me was Ron Elijah, manager of a couple of Robertson Stephens mutual funds Information Age and Value and Growth. After the presentation, I asked him if he had ever heard of Digital River. He said no -- but that there had been such a huge rush to get in that he thought he should check it out. Maybe this was the phenomenon that an Iowa hedge fund manager had told me about. He said he sometimes decides to buy a stock because he "feels the energy flowing into it." I asked what it felt like, and he said: "I know it when I see it." Sounds like the Supreme Court's definition of pornography. Miller