was passiert mit YAHOO?? - 500 Beiträge pro Seite

[dennisrodman]

warum is die schon wieder 3% im minus???

[SCIQUEST]

...weil die Fantasie momentan am Nullpunkt ist.YHOO fehlt das Finanzgeschäft (Onlinebroking!?)

[Amalaswintha]

http://www.themarker.com

  15:28  Monday  |  October  16,  2000
From Yahoo! to whimper

16.10.2000  |  14:13

Guy Rolnik  
The vision of the New Middle East has fizzled out over the last couple of weeks. Broad swatches of the Israeli public previously convinced that sanity and normalization were slowly filtering through the Mideast sands feel they’ve been slapped awake into a new, harsher reality.

Meanwhile, the hi-tech industry has become embroiled in a fight of its own. Is the hi-tech “bubble” susceptible to the surrounding storm? Optimists argue that most of the sector’s clients are not Israeli anyway, that R&D isn’t affected by events outside the lab and in any case, the staff can be flown off to the United States if necessary. The Cassandras point out that actually, hi-tech is particularly vulnerable because it is entirely dependent on contact with the world, and Israel is looking particularly bad right now when viewed from the U.S. or Europe.

But the sobering up wasn’t only in the political arena of Israeli-Palestinian relations. Just as the New Middle East vision sputtered, Wall Street began to view Internet-IT-computers in a whole new light.

Choking on cream
The most extreme example of the sudden sobriety is evident in Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO) stock, which crashed by about 30% last week, sucking out about $15 billion from the company`s market capitalization. The imploding valuation of one of the most profitable companies in the Internet industry sent shockwaves throughout the industry. Internet-related stocks, such as DoubleClick (NasdaqCLK), caved in, losing half their value over five days.

Yahoo!’s dive came after the company published its third quarter statement. It has beat analyst forecasts. Revenues had grown by 90% against the comparable quarter of 1999, and net profits had increased by 70% to $80 million.

Why did investors choke on the cream? Analysts could think of plenty of reasons. Some said that being a good company isn’t enough today, a company has to be very good. Others said that the company`s management didn’t sound optimistic enough. Some mentioned the inevitable – that there are question marks hovering over companies based on revenues from Internet advertising.

But we prefer to point a finger at an aside during the conference call the company`s executive held with analysts after publishing its Q3 report. Somewhere in the conversation, Yahoo!’s CFO mentioned that weak euro could hurt the company`s results in Europe.

What – the euro? Did we hear that right? The CFO of Yahoo! is talking about currency rates?

Now, we understand when Intel (Nasdaq:INTC) discourses about the euro, when Lucent Technologies (NYSE:LU) brings it up, when the Israeli textiles company Delta Galil Industries (NasdaqELT) converses about currency exchange rates. But Yahoo! Isn’t Yahoo! that Webby wonder powered by the “Internet economy”, shooting through uncharted regions of cyberspace at viral, computerized rates of growth no man has ever seen before? Detached from earthly concerns such as – what was it again, exchange rates?

Back down on earth
Apparently not. It transpires that even the stars of the Internet sky, companies with a business model as solid as a planet, companies generating enormous earnings and expanding strong, companies that don’t need to spend a red cent on branding and marketing, whose clients are their best marketers – eventually turn out to be – companies. Regular humdrum companies.

And regular companies need salespeople to sell advertising space. They need marketing staff to close e-commerce deals. Regular companies are affected by the currency paid to them by customers. And Yahoo!, cybercompany extraordinaire, is taking on the trappings of a regular company.

And the moment that Yahoo! begins to emanate even the slightest whiff of being a regular company, investors turn their attention to its market capitalization ($100 billion half a year ago, $45 billion a week ago, $32 billion today) and say to themselves, hang on, just how much does that company have to earn to justify its valuation?

And the ! turned into a ?
Even after its swan dive, Yahoo! is still trading at an inconceivably enormous market cap, underscoring the company`s unique qualities, vast potential and the value it has created for investors during the last five years. Internet world denizens knows that Yahoo! does it better, faster and smarter than anybody else.

But we believe the question mark floating over Yahoo!’s head represents a new wave, higher than its predecessor, about to inundate the Internet industry. Not only the dot.coms, most of which will go bankrupt over the coming year, but also the companies that develop software and even equipment manufacturers.

Internet isn’t a dream any more. It’s reality. They aren’t the wunderkind of the corporate world, they’re companies taking on the veneer of familiar old regularity. And if the Internet isn’t magic any more, then neither are companies developing broadband communications gear for fast Internet, or data security companies and their ilk. Because at the end of the day somebody has to pay for that broadband, and for all those technological innovations. The more time goes by, the clearer it will become that while advanced technologies are being adopted, it isn’t happening anywhere close to the predicted pace.