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

To: Educator who wrote (7569)	4/9/1999 3:25:00 AM
From: FR1	Respond to of 29970

I think this was all covered fairly well in press releases. As I understand it: 1) There exists a agreement between TCI and all the other cable owners of ATHM that they will upgrade and sign subscribers at a clearly defined rate agreed upon by them in writing. There was teeth to the agreement. Some major players could jump ship if others did not make quotas, etc. etc. 2) TCI did not keep its part of the bargain (others did) and the agreement is about to run out of time. Maloney spent his money on a whole bunch of other stuff (commented on a great deal on this thread last year) and ignored the upgrade and ATHM roll out for the most part. The agreement was about to hit its time limit. Something had to be done. 3) What has just happened is that the players met and rewrote the agreement. They realize that T, unlike TCI, has very deep pockets and is dead serious about the upgrades. So they agreed to new targets, which T promises to meet, and agreed that if T does not make the targets the other players get a larger share of ATHM ownership. A statement by one of them was something like: We don't want to rock the boat. We are behind the agreement completely. We just want to make sure that T really does do the upgrades it says it will do and we want it in writing. This is nothing but good for us. T really is serious, has the money, and has bet the farm on cable upgrades. The agreement only helps us and gives heart to anyone looking long. It also points out what everyone knew for some time: the old TCI sucks but the new T rules.