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Technology Stocks : America On-Line (AOL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tunica Albuginea who wrote (14841)	5/5/1999 10:56:00 AM
From: Jeff Sutton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 41369

Bought some more AOL at 122 ... thought 120 might be the bottom, but the selling still looks relentless ... some big institutions that bought much lower still have a lot of profit to protect ... could still get uglier here ... I'm no longer willing to predict the bottom ... expect to see some more movement up or down once this AT&T/MediaOne deal gets sorted out. Now, since I'm out of cash, I can just sit back and enjoy the show. Good luck AOL longs.

To: Tunica Albuginea who wrote (14841)	5/5/1999 10:57:00 AM
From: LOGAN12	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 41369

I heard this AM that ATT may team up with Microsoft to do this deal.

To: Tunica Albuginea who wrote (14841)	5/5/1999 11:15:00 AM
From: Joe S Pack	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 41369

TA, You make a good point. T is making the argument that it will save billions of dollars in local access fees to RBOCS. But of course they will get cable revenue etc. But here are the few points to ponder: 1) T needs to spend billions of dollars in hardware to upgrade cable nets to make truely two-way internet access. 2) With 100 billion dollar dilution on shares for the two recent buys and already sold $10B worth of bonds, how will it affect share performance in a short while? In the long run if they can execute well and the merger succeeds it will be a good investment. 3) Still there will be regulatory hurdles along the way. 4) These mergers may tarnise ATT's image as a reliable phone company. Cable companies don't have that kind of image with customers. 5) RBOCs will accelerate their DSL deployment at a faster rate than they would have planned or would like to do. 6) ATT does n't have a good record on buy and merge front. Remeber BOb Allan destroyed NCR and lost a few billion dollars. May be Amstrong is a different guy but any merger of these magnitude will take lot more time to be smooth and efficient than people would like to have. Now it is not two but is three. Points 5 and 6 are good for AOL. -Nat

To: Tunica Albuginea who wrote (14841)	5/5/1999 12:36:00 PM
From: RTev	Respond to of 41369

Only reason baby bells haven't offered cable so far is because they didn't have to. BellSouth already has a significant cable business. MediaOne was, until a year ago, a subsidiary of USWest. Its ticker is UMG for USWest Media Group. They split it off because it didn't fit in with whatever it is they call their "business plan". So there's one (admittedly worse case -- US Worst case) example of the wisdom of those hungry RBOCs. [submitted via USWest DSL, by the way]

To: Tunica Albuginea who wrote (14841)	5/5/1999 2:18:00 PM
From: RocketMan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 41369

Good post. So far it looks like we double bottomed today, but as someone else said, the close will tell.

To: Tunica Albuginea who wrote (14841)	5/5/1999 2:58:00 PM
From: Tunica Albuginea	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 41369

Voltaire,Armstrong just on CNBC with R. Insannna: Highlights and my comments in bold: 1) "deal with UMG will increase growth rate by 10 - 12 %/year and cash flow" by 20%n . Comm: Not a great growth rate, 10-12%/year, is it?: Buy AOL @ 50%+/year<g> 2) "I am looking forward to working with steve to be our broadband network" Comment: does not look like AT&T wants to be a portal or content company 3)"we are discussing with CMCST to buy their non-voting ATHM stock and in exchange give them 2 mill ATHM subscribers." Comment: does not look like AT&T is looking for subscribers 4) "I want to assure you that ANY deal with MSFT or any other software or hardware vendor WILL BE NON-EXCLUSIVE and WILL BE MULTI-VENDOR; in other words WE WILL NOT RULE OUT ANY COMPETITION." Comment: Armstrong wants T to be just be an ISP and phone company? Overall looks positive to me. Looks like Armstrong wants T to be a big phone cable Co, leaving content, portal, e-commerce to somebody else. This after all makes sense. For T to be ALL of the above is beyond their know how and capabilities. Unless of course this is blue smoke and mirrors to get the UMG deal past FCC approval, but I doubt that. TA