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Technology Stocks : Softbank Group Corp -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (208)	6/1/1999 4:47:00 AM
From: Edwin S. Fujinaka	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6020

Today on CNBC they had an Investor's Conference (in conjunction with the LA Times) and I heard Softbank mentioned twice by different people. In one instance, someone from the audience asked about Softbank and the analyst only had a vague idea about Softbank. In the second instance, an older analyst gave a positive mention, but His information was somewhat dated in that He thought that Softbank owned 31% of Yahoo/USA. I think that the current figure is more like 28% due to a sale that took place earlier this year of around 3 million shares if I recall correctly. If the analyst would have looked a little further, He might have noted that Softbank posted a nice increase in earnings for the last fiscal year. If He looked a little further, the increased earnings were due to the sale of the Yahoo stock. If the Internet Market for IPOs holds up, this could be the profit model for Softbank for the next year or two. Even some modest decline in the valuation afforded to Internet Stocks would still be manageable. The "Tulipomania" that many people are using as the model for the inflated Internet Stock prices falls short in one major respect. They are both "manias" of a sort insofar as there doesn't seem to be a rational, conventional way to value either, but the Internet "business" is clearly destined to expand very rapidly over the next few years while the tulip business had no such guarentee. Even Amazon.com will probably continue to expand sales (if not profits) but tomorrow the Barron's article will have it's impact and it could dent the entire Internet sector. I predict that the effect will be short term and not too deep. It could spell the end of the influence of the conventional analysts in the Internet arena and people may look to Microsoft or Softbank to invest money and validate a particular Internet Company. I salivate at the prospect of Softbank becoming a factor in the American Marketplace. A relatively small ADR could bootstrap the market cap for the entire Company. I believe that additional ADRs can be issued later with the concurrent purchase or issuance of additional Japanese shares of Softbank. I'm not sure of the mechanics, but I think I recall Honda Motors doing that back in the 60's. I suppose a big factor will be how to value the closely held stocks in the Softbank portfolio. To have such problems <G>.