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Technology Stocks : Booking Holdings (formerly Priceline) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MarX who wrote (1374)	5/18/1999 11:06:00 PM
From: Tom Hua	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2743

They recognize the full value of the ticket "sold", when in reality they are merely the middle man; they never own the tickets; they are not liable to the airlines for unsold tickets. Their revenue on this transaction should be the commission or fee that they earn as the middle man Johnny, agree completely. I have been saying this very point too. If PTVL and EBAY adopted the same trick as PCLN, they would be reporting revenues more than 10 times higher than the actual revenues. Ebay would be reporting quarterly revenues of $600 MM. In reality, PCLN's revenue last quarter was just a few $MM, not the misleading $50 MM reported. Regards, Tom

To: MarX who wrote (1374)	5/18/1999 11:41:00 PM
From: B. A. Marlow	Respond to of 2743

Apparently, Johnny, title to tickets passes through PCLN. This is what would distinguish PCLN from EBAY in terms of revenue recognition and why, technically, PCLN's accounting is "correct." Title may not, however, pass through PCLN for all transaction categories. Frankly, it doesn't much matter whether PCLN reports the value of product transactions as "sales" or not. At least this way, you shorts get to complain about margins. If revenue recognition were limited to fees and commissions, PCLN's "margins" would look like EBAY's and you'd have to seek traction elsewhere. As to the "New York Times," maybe we at least have something in common. The article was somewhere between incompetent and fraudulent. If anyone's interested, here it is, along with my response (posted to the GNET board): nytimes.com Message 9554441 BAM