Die Rückkehr des Evangelisten der New Economy! - 500 Beiträge pro Seite

[Gigaguru]

David Wetherell, CEO von CMGI, dem Symbol der New Economy, ist zurück! Sein Internetimperium, dessen Aktienkurs seit der Emission vor sechs Jahren zunächst um sagenhafte 85.000 Prozent zulegte und sich schließlich annähernd hundertstelte, hat vor vier Wochen die Wende vollzogen: Der Kurs verdreifachte sich seitdem und hat sich alleine in dieser Woche mehr als verdoppelt. Doch dies war erst der Anfang!



Thread: CMGI - Comeback eines Börsenstars!

Gigaguru

[BerndCM1966]

Hallo Gigaguru !

Ich hoffe Du hast recht, ich bin heute mit OS 769570 wieder reingegangen, nachdem ich 1 Jahr lang nur geblutet habe.
Es ist aber nichts stichhaltiges an Gründen für diesen rasanten Kursanstieg zu finden, oder ??

[Gigaguru]

Interview mit David Wetherall (CMGI CEO)

CMGI ist die erfolgreichste Aktie der Welt (Quelle: Wirtschaftswoche 41/00), von 1995 bis 1999 bescherte sie ihren Aktionären einen durchschnittlichen Ertrag von 213% pro Jahr, in den letzten beiden Jahren waren es sogar jeweils mehr als 750% - ein Traumergebnis.
Chairman und CEO David Wetherall ist ein Visionär, alles was er sich in den Kopf gesetzt hat, schaffte er stets im Rekordtempo. Die Börsenwelt lag ihm Ende 1999 zu Füßen, der CMGI-Aktienkurs wurde in immer neue Höhen katapultiert, war drauf und dran die Ionosphäre zu verlassen. Wetherall mußte reagieren, und wie eh und je erreichte er sein Ziel wiederum in Rekordzeit: den perfekten Turnaround.

Redboerse.de sprach Mitte Dezember 2000 mit David Wetherall

Red: David, wieder einmal haben sie es geschafft, Anleger und Analysten zu überraschen. Verraten Sie uns ein paar Details Ihrer Strategie?

Wetherall: Aber gerne. Erst einmal vielen Dank für Ihr Lob. Ja, es war nicht einfach, die Anleger davon zu überzeugen unsere Aktien zu verkaufen, aber die Aktie notierte einfach auf unverantwortlich hohem Niveau. Ich hatte mir vorgenommen unseren Kurs in diesem Jahr zu zwanzigsteln, und wir haben es geschafft.

Red: Wie kamen Sie in diese Bredouille, zu diesem extrem hohen Kurs?

Wetherall: Nun, seit ich damals die Betaversion unseres Webbrowsers an AOL verkauft habe, hat fast täglich das Telefon geklingelt, und irgendein Hannes wollte was von uns kaufen. Ich weiß noch, wollte meine Ruhe haben und hab bei GeoCities einfach mal das Dreifache vom Wert verlangt, aber Yahoo! hat bei 100 Dollar pro Aktie sofort ja gesagt. Und dann SilkNet und Lycos und und und... ich hab nur da gesessen und beide Hände aufgehalten, die haben sich ja alle um das Zeugs gekloppt.

Red: Was genau war eigentlich das Problem dabei für CMGI?

Wetherall: Wir haben in Geld geschwommen! Ich wusste überhaupt nicht mehr wohin damit. 1999 haben wir in einem Quartal mal mehr als 4 Dollar Gewinn pro Aktie ausweisen müssen, wir hatten plötzlich zwei Milliarden Dollar Cash rumliegen. Und keiner hier hatte eine Idee, was wir mit dem Geld anstellen sollten. Wir waren immer ein dynamisches Unternehmen mit einer klaren Strategie, Geld auf`m Konto rumliegen zu lassen, das kommt bei den Analysten nicht gut an - das Geld musste weg!

Red: Wieso haben sie nicht schon früher etwas unternommen?

Wetherall: (lacht zynisch) Also bitte! Ich hab doch 1999 kaum etwas anderes gemacht. Ständig haben wir die Aktie gesplittet, um den Kurs herunter zu kriegen. Hat nichts gebracht, wir konnten nicht monatlich splitten, da hat die SEC [US-Börsenaufsicht, die Red.] nicht mitgespielt. Dann hab ich`s mit Kapitalerhöhungen probiert, aber die haben uns die neuen Aktien wie mit nem Tornado rausgesaugt.

Red: Verstehe, ja das ist schon bitter! Nun, das neue Millennium hat begonnen...

Wetherall: ...genau, und da wollten wir es besser machen. Die erste Regel: es wird nichts mehr verkauft! Das habe ich in all unseren Büros an die Wand pinnen lassen. Wenn wir noch mehr Beteiligungen verkauft hätten, dann wäre zum einen das Konto noch weiter angeschwollen, zum anderen hätten wir kaum eine Chance gehabt, das Geld noch zu verbrennen.

Red: Ihr erstes Cash-Burn-Projekt?

Wetherall: Wir haben gleich richtig groß damit angefangen, sonst hätten wir den Kurs niemals um 95% runtergekriegt. Als erstes habe ich für unsere Engage (ENGA) den Markt nach unrentablen Werbeklitschen abgesucht, und alles aufgekauft was ich bekommen konnte. Dann kam mir die Idee, unsere Suchmaschine AltaVista ein bißchen herunter zu wirtschaften. Ideal war, AltaVista möglichst viele regionale und internationale Portale bauen zu lassen, wo sie dann kostenlose Dienstleistungen wie eMail und Internetzugang anbieten können. Sachen zu verschenken, das ist einfach großartig: die Leute sind glücklich und wir kriegen unser Geld unter.

Red: Die Idee, Waren und Dienstleistungen zu verschenken, kommt aber nicht von Ihnen!

Wetherall: Richtig, aber wenn wir etwas Gutes bei der Konkurrenz entdecken, übernehmen wir es gerne. Die Idee mit iCAST kam aber alleine von mir! Da haben wir eine tolle, bunte Werbekampagne gestartet, bevor die iCAST-Seiten überhaupt im Netz waren (Wetherall strahlt). Nach ein paar Monaten konnte man sich dort dann kostenlos Musikvideos ansehen und ein bißchen mit Kumpels chatten, war einfach klasse. Ich bin ein großer Fan von Multimedia, und CMGI hatte so etwas noch nicht im Portfolio. Allerdings habe ich mittlerweile meine Liebe zum guten, alten Buch wiederentdeckt; wir machen iCAST in ein paar Wochen wieder dicht.

Red: Und was war mit E-Commerce?

Wetherall: Das sind natürlich die besten Cash-Burner, da mußten wir dabei sein. Ich hab lange überlegt, was sich wohl am Schlechtesten über`s Internet verkaufen läßt, da sind wir dann rein. MotherNature.com (MTHR) verkauft Vitamine und Öko-Zeugs, war klar, daß die meisten Öks nicht viel mit Computern anfangen können. Und dann Möbel! Einfach perfekt, niemand läßt sich seine Couchgarnitur oder den Wohnzimmerschrank mit der Post schicken! Furniture.com hat unsere Kasse gut runtergebracht. Beide Firmen sind jetzt pleite, wir können kein neues Geld mehr reinstecken, ohne daß uns irgendein Aktionärsclub mit dem Anwalt droht, müssen halt was Neues suchen.

Red: Haben sich die Bilanzen gebessert?

Wetherall: Oh ja! Wir haben jedes Quartal mehr als 250 Millionen Dollar verbrannt, das war das Maximum, was rauszuholen war - aber es hat ja gereicht. Unsere Kasse ist jetzt wieder unter 800 Millionen und der Aktienkurs auf einem Niveau, daß man ihn wieder in einem Atemzug aufsagen kann.

Red: Ihr persönliches Engagement dabei?

Wetherall: Ich habe Aktien und Optionen in dreistelliger Millionenhöhe verkauft, und das im Herbst publik gemacht. Damals hat der Kurs gerade wieder angefangen zu spinnen, ich konnte ihn durch diese Aktion wieder in die richtige Richtung bewegen.

Red: Und dann der Coup mit dem Stadion...

Wetherall: (strahlt) Ja, Yesss! Da bin ich wirklich stolz drauf, Sie glauben gar nicht wie schwer es ist, heutzutage einen Club zu finden, der noch nicht von einem Konkurrenten gesponsort wird. Wir haben 140 Millionen Dollar abgedrückt, und das Stadion heißt jetzt CMGI Field - für 10 Jahre! Ich war letzte Woche einmal dort, auf der Anzeigetafel ist sogar unser Logo. Stellen Sie sich einmal vor: CBS übertragt ein Spiel aus dem CMGI Field, und ganz Amerika sieht unser Logo!!

Red: Glückwunsch, David! Wie sehen nun Ihre weiteren Pläne für CMGI aus?

Wetherall: Nun, wir hatten geplant, den Kurs bis Jahresende auf 5 Dollar pro Aktie zu bekommen, das schaffen wir auch, da bin ich sicher. Im Januar ist die Aktie dann wieder auf einem vernünftigen Niveau, und wir können mit dem Geld verbrennen aufhören. Eigentlich war ja wieder ein Turnaround auf $100 geplant, aber ich weiß wirklich nicht ob ich mir das noch einmal antun muß. Es ist immer doof, wenn die Dinge sich wiederholen, man verliert die Lust daran - es ist zu einfach. Ich werde das Thema über die Feiertage mit meiner Familie diskutieren und dann entscheiden, ob ich weitermache oder aufhöre. Man soll dann gehen, wenn es am Schönsten ist. Vielleicht trete ich auch zurück und verbringe etwas mehr Zeit mit meiner Frau und den Kindern.

Red: Fühlen Sie sich dann nicht ein wenig unausgelastet?

Wetherall: Zur Not könnte ich immer noch meiner Frau im Nagelstudio aushelfen.

Red: Vielen Dank für das Gespräch.

[Gigaguru]

Es gibt keine speziellen Gründe für den aktuellen Kursanstieg von CMGI, trotzdem sprach vieles für einen früher oder später eintretenden drastischen Rebound:

- dramatische Unterbewertung
- massive Short-Eindeckungen
- hohe Cashbestände (4 US-$ pro Aktie)
- günstige Charttechnik (Überschreitung der 100-Tage-Linie, Brechung des Abwärtstrends)
- allgemeine Erholung der Internetaktien

Gigaguru

[PCK]

@ giga

Lieber Giga!
Du willst uns doch bestimmt einen aufbinden und hast das Interview selbst geschrieben. Ein solches primitives Gewäsch habe ich bisher noch von keinem Vorstandsvorsitzenden gehört.
Und das von dem Strahlegott Wetherell.
Aber anscheinend muss man in der freien Marktwirtschaft von solchem Holz geschnitzt sein um Erfolg auf Kosten der armen Aktionärsteufel zu machen.
Vuielleicht hilft mir David aber auch aus meiner selbstverschuldeten Aktienmisere.
Der Anfang ist ja gemacht.
Also weiter so, David!!! jehowa hilf!!!
Solche Typen braucht das Land. Solche wie Christoph und nicht solche wie Berti.
Wetherell does it well!!

Good night, God bless you!!!

[Gigaguru]

Hier die Quelle des Interviews: http://www.redmailorder.com/boerse/mag551.htm




David S. Wetherell

David Wetherell is chairman and CEO of CMGI, Inc. (Nasdaq: CMGI) and managing partner of the company`s venture capital affiliate, @Ventures. A true industry pioneer, David understood and sought to harness the impact of the Internet long before it was recognized as the transformative force it is today. Based on this keen vision and a proven ability to identify untapped market opportunity, David has served as the primary architect of CMGI - today, the largest, most diverse network of Internet companies in the world.

David`s history with the company began in 1986 when he led a leveraged buyout of a small direct marketing company, known then as CMG or College Marketing Group, and renamed it CMG Information Services. After taking CMGI public in January 1994, David founded BookLink Technologies, Inc., a software business which created an early version of the Internet browser. Ten months later, he sold BookLink to America Online in a stock-based transaction which ultimately netted CMGI more than $70 million. The gains from that transaction provided the funding, and laid the groundwork for CMGI`s revolutionary dual-channeled business model, blending both operating businesses and complimentary venture capital investments in early-stage Internet companies.

The Operating Group was formed to develop and leverage a growing family of majority-owned Internet companies in core segments, such as online marketing and advertising, and web hosting; while @Ventures was formed as a venture capital affiliate focused solely on identifying, funding, and nurturing the most promising new businesses capitalizing on the Internet opportunity. This unique combination has created a powerful, synergistic network of both people and technologies, enabling CMGI to fuel the growth of its member companies and in fact, mirror the tremendous growth of the Internet itself. Today, the CMGI network consists of more than 70 companies spanning every sector of the Internet Economy.

David is a frequent speaker on Internet issues affecting both the business and financial communities, and his industry acumen has been recognized with numerous accolades and editorial awards including the `New England Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year` award, and Worth Magazine`s `Wall Street`s 25 Smartest Players.` CMGI has also been named to the Mass eComm`s `Top 10 Companies` listing for three consecutive years, as well as Business 2.0`s `Top 100,` Industry Standard`s `Most Important Companies in the Internet Economy;` and Red Herring`s `100 Most Important Companies in the World.`

David holds a BA in Mathematics and Education from Ohio Wesleyan University.

http://www.cmgi.com/about/dwbio.jhtml

[Gigaguru]

January 15, 2001
The Internet World Interview

http://www.internetworld.com/011501/01.15.01interview.jsp

David Wetherell

Just wait until the synergies kick in, says CMGI’s Chairman and CEO, of his consolidation efforts

By Jason Black

CMGI, one of the Internet’s original holding companies, may be a far cry from its glory days, but don’t count out its chairman and CEO, David Wetherell. This past fall the company announced a massive restructuring that broke its component parts into five operating divisions, plus its venture capital arm. Out of this, 17 majority-owned operating companies have emerged. As the new year begins, CMGI is down to 13 companies in its five divisions. That number is likely to be reduced even further in the year ahead, as a result of both internal consolidation and outright sell-offs. Wetherell has suggested that the magic number might be nine, while analysts have speculated that CMGI might try to cut back to a single company per division.

Either way, the companies that are left behind will potentially be in a strong position to take advantage of the inherent synergies that exist between them. For instance, in late December it was announced that three of CMGI’s holdings, the search service AltaVista, managed service provider NaviSite, and the professional services company Tallan, will be working together on a strategic alliance with EMC.

Wetherell takes what he calls a “scatter-gather” approach to running CMGI. That is, he buys up a lot of companies at once, and then brings the pieces together to find the best fit. Clearly, the days of scattering are over. “They are holding various groups that don’t necessarily mesh with each other,” says Safa Rashtchy, vice president and senior analyst at U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray. To be viable, Wetherell needs to move CMGI beyond its position as a pioneer, and focus on its core competencies.

CMGI must now demonstrate that it is not simply a holding company, but that it is in fact a genuine operating company, Rashtchy says. And that is the biggest challenge that Wetherell faces in the year ahead.

Internet World: Compared to this time last year, the outlook for the public markets is a lot less exuberant. You indicated during your keynote speech at the Internet World Fall 2000 show that the market’s not going to reward long runways, and that investors want to see companies reaching profitability quickly. Does that type of environment worry you, looking at the year ahead?

David Wetherell: No, I actually think there are a lot of opportunities for those that are well positioned, because there are going to be a lot of bargains out there for the companies left standing. We have a lot of cash, and we have a lot of strong companies that are growing well, simply because we’ve taken the tough measures to reduce our dependence on advertising. We’re now down to about 20 percent of our revenue that’s tied to advertising, and the parts that aren’t tied to advertising are growing very well.

IW: Are there any particular focus areas for you, as far as buying interests?

Wetherell: We’re really focused in recurring revenue streams and software licensing—infrastructure plays. I still like advertising in the long run. I just think it’s going to be a year or so before we see that being a significant growth opportunity.

IW: CMGI, through holdings like Engage, was pretty instrumental in the development of online advertising, and yet ...

Wetherell: Eventually we think that Engage is going to be a really significant player as advertising takes off more on the Web. But it’s going to have to be more of a rich-media advertising world. But even with Engage, we’ve reduced the dependence on advertising, because we’ve got a very strong software licensing group within the company that’s helping marketers integrate their promotions across all media and do all kinds of analytics and reporting on their campaigns.

IW: So the fact that companies like Engage and 24/7 and DoubleClick have all been hit pretty hard this year doesn’t signal a problem for you as far as online advertising is concerned?

Wetherell: I think that there is a real recession going on in online advertising. And, the important point is that, vis-à-vis CMGI in the large, we’ve got 13 companies. Only two of them derive part of their revenue from advertising, and that’s Engage and AltaVista.

IW: How do you continue to monetize the services that AltaVista offers if there is a limit to the amount of advertising that’s going to happen?

Wetherell: Well, the search portal that they have is still the eighth most popular site on the Web. And CPM rates for search-related revenue are much higher than on the Web at large. A lot of other “portals” derive the majority of their page views from very difficult to monetize inventory—you know, home page publishing, e-mail, chat and so on, where you get very low CPM rates. But that’s not the kind of inventory that AltaVista is focused on. An increasing percentage of its revenue, now to about 15 percent of their revenue and growing, is coming from software sales and licensing. We think that in the 12- or 24-month period, that’ll become over 50 percent of their sales.

IW: Back in mid-November it was announced that you were looking for a buyer for both iCast and 1stUp by the end of January. What is the status of that?

Wetherell: Yeah, we’re talking to about 20-something companies that expressed interest for some of the assets of iCast. On the 1stUp side, there is the customer base and software assets there that have value.

IW: Is it difficult to try to sell off a company, though, when you’ve indicated that you’re ready to get out of it?

Wetherell: We did try to sell those companies before we decided to divest of the assets. We weren’t able to get a viable value. So we felt that we either need to step up and spend another couple hundred million dollars to develop that, or look at whether we could deploy that couple hundred million more productively elsewhere, in areas that weren’t dependent on advertising, where we’re seeing a lot of growth. And we have those kinds of companies. So we made the decision, let’s focus on what’s working in this market. It’s not that we aren’t focused on the long term, because a lot of those companies that are growing very well today are also well-positioned for the long term.

IW: What does “long term” mean for you?

Wetherell: As far as I can see, 5 to 10 years out there. Web hosting, particularly managed services, is going to continue to be a really great business. What CMGion’s doing is something that should be great 5 to 15 years out, as well. Search is always going to be fundamental.

IW: How do you convince the investment community, “We are in this for a long term, so be patient with us?”

Wetherell: Well, the way we convince it is to show that we have enough cash for the long term, and that companies that we have are either profitable or quickly getting to profitability and growing. So they want to see growth, they want to see cash generation from existing companies. They want to see plenty of cash in the bank to fulfill your plans. There were plans we had that would have sucked up a lot of cash, and more than we had. We would have had more if the stock market didn’t crash like it did. So that just dictated a different strategy for us. We’re fortunate enough we had enough assets because we were involved in the early days of the Web. A lot of people who tried to follow our model more recently just didn’t have enough time to build a critical mass of assets that they could rely upon.

IW: Can we talk a bit about some of the ideas or opportunities that you backed off of because money was an issue this past year?

Wetherell: They’re just advertising-based companies like iCast and 1stUp. Myway.com had two platforms, an advertising platform and a license-based platform. We decided to move entirely over to the license fees platform. A number of the largest customers, like Bell South and Fidelity, have chosen to move over to that platform. So now they’re generating revenue for us as opposed to an expense, because we weren’t able to cover the expense with advertising to run the service. So that’s a win-win. Even though AltaVista’s doing well in the advertising space, we just think that in order to really ensure strong growth they ought to leverage their position in search licensing to a greater extent. And we saw the opportunity to do that because we think it’s a big market. They happen to own 38 patents, many of which we think are fundamental in the search area. They were the first to spider and index the Web. And Digital did a good job of recognizing the potential value of that intellectual property. And they were very thorough in filing broad and deep and narrow patents. And we have another 30 patents that are in application. So we believe that virtually everyone out there who indexes the Web is in violation of at least several of those key patents.

IW: Does that mean you’ll pursue that?

Wetherell: Yes, we will. Coming up in the first quarter of 2001.

IW: So we may see some lawsuits ...

Wetherell: If necessary, we will defend it, to the letter of the law.

IW: Are there any specific examples of the types of patents?

Wetherell: If you index a distributed set of databases—what the Internet is—and even within intranets, corporations, that’s one of the patents. We did a press release on this with a list of six or ten of the key areas that the patents cover.

IW: Do the benefits of being associated with a holding company accrue equally to all of the players?

Wetherell: It depends on their needs and the market opportunities. It’s not an equal thing. It’s basic—where are the greatest opportunities? We should put more in NaviSite, because managed services, we think, are going to be a lot bigger opportunity. It’s continuing to grow very fast, quarter over quarter. So let’s put more money in that direction, and maybe de-emphasize advertising and put less money in that direction. So by no means is it equal.

IW: If you were to pick a company or two within the CMGI family right now that you think is the most solid, which one would that be, and why?

Wetherell: You know, if I had to pick one, it’s a hard question. It would have to be between the three of AltaVista, uBid, and NaviSite. Because we have leading search and patents in AltaVista. We have world-class managed services, not just sticking a lock on a cage, and with a lot of excess capacity floor space to expand into, which a lot of the others that are in the managed service space just don’t have. So we have a lot more upside without additional infrastructure build-out within North America. And we have strong partners internationally to start expanding there as we finalize the round of funding that we’re putting together for NaviSite right now. And then uBid is in an extremely powerful position because they proved to be No. 1 in the world in B2C auctions for effectively refurbished equipment, primarily computers. Now they’re getting first lines of equipment, from Hewlett-Packard and others. They’re also branching into C2C successfully. The growth is just dramatic and, quite frankly, eye-popping; far greater than our expectations. We thought it might be a tough road to hoe because of the entrenched players in the space. ... To start an auction site is difficult. You don’t have that critical mass. We already had the critical mass, so we were able to diversify into C2C. And we have a lot of other traffic we can drive to it through Engage and AltaVista.

IW: Where do you see CMGion being able to distinguish itself from competitors? In caching and content distribution?

Wetherell: Yeah. That’s one area. Another one is data-center-on-demand services.

IW: What does that mean for you?

Wetherell: With content distribution and caching, it basically turns dumb pipes into smart pipes. But it also turns dumb servers into smart servers, dumb data centers into smart data centers. When you plug into the Ion network of data centers and servers, you not only get more capacity if you need it, we will purchase from you your excess capacity. So each new customer not only brings more revenue, they bring more capacity to Ion. And that leads not only to really great capacity to serve, but also lower cost to increase your infrastructure. You don’t have to invest in all these other servers if they’re just plugging in, and you’re able to monetize it.

IW: So the fact that Ion right now is behind Akamai or Digital Island ...

Wetherell: It’s different. We’ll use an Akamai, you know, Akamai can plug in. And we can work with what they have to boost performance even more than what they deliver.

IW: So what’s the time frame for Ion?

Wetherell: This summer.

IW: For live, ready-to-go ...

Wetherell: That’s what they’re telling me. We think we can do it, realistically. They’re already starting test modules, and we have a little over 100 engineers working on it. And it’s well funded. They don’t need any more funding.

IW: Are you looking to move away from strictly consumer offerings?

Wetherell: Oh, no. It just depends on what the model is. The uBid model is one that works very well, so it scales. We have another company in the family called SalesLink that specializes in inventory management and fulfillment. I think it’s natural that we look at combining SalesLink and uBid to extend uBid’s scalability and capacity and efficiency of operations to add more points to the bottom line of margin. A lot of companies in that space just don’t have that. It costs them a lot of money to build it. Well, we already had it with SalesLink. We bought that company in 1989 when it was $4 million in revenue, and now it’s over $200 million in revenue. It has very sophisticated inventory management and fulfillment operations. ... If we combine it with uBid, it’s got a giant customer, if you will, in uBid itself. And uBid gets much more scalability and sophisticated inventory management and fulfillment, which is the real key to their game.

IW: Let’s shift gears for a little bit. How far along is CMGI with the completion of its reorganization? And when will you be able to officially say, “We’re done”?

Wetherell: Well, we’ll never be done making the organization more efficient. And we’ve reduced our exposure to advertising to the extent that we’re going to, I think. We might reduce it a little bit further, but not much. And that was a big part of the restructuring. We still will combine some companies, like uBid and SalesLink, in all likelihood.

IW: Has it taken this amount of time with the companies that are active to figure out where those synergies are?

Wetherell: No. It’s just sometimes, like in the case of uBid, we bought the company in this past year. We wanted to make sure they were going to execute upon their plan, which was to get to profitability within the next couple of quarters—and so far all indications are they are—before we merge them with another profitable company like SalesLink. And it looks like all systems are go there. So we can effect that merger and have a company that’s in excess of $600 million in revenue and growing very strongly with nice margins and growing margins.

IW: What separates CMGI from other holding companies these days?

Wetherell: Well, first of all, unlike a General Electric, we have a lot more synergy between each of our businesses. And GE’s a great company, and I don’t mean to speak negatively there. It’s just certainly there’s more leverage between our businesses than you would find in a holding company. And we have probably faster inherent growth drivers behind our business than holding companies in industries other than the Internet. There aren’t many holding companies in the Internet.

IW: There’s a few.

Wetherell: Yeah, well, the difference between an Internet Capital Group and ourselves is we have over $1.4 billion in revenues. And we have profitable companies already and a number more that are quickly moving to profitability. We have several times more cash, and, frankly, we’re not tied to B2B. We have found a successful part of B2B that works. Again, B2B auctions for consumer electronics and PCs in uBid. But frankly, a lot of the rest of them are taking a lot longer to get to fruition. It’s not that it isn’t going to be a giant area, but it’s going to take a lot longer than I think a lot of people think before it hits a real critical mass where these companies can be making money. And it’s not that we’re not focused on the long term. It’s just you’ve got to have big bank accounts to get there.

IW: What are some steps that you would take to make sure that companies within different pockets are working together in ways that are compelling and favorable?

Wetherell: Well, first of all, every Monday morning we have a meeting that I chair of all the CEOs that goes for about a couple hours. That’s every week. And I sit on the boards of every company. We have other people from the same corporate office that sit on the board of many of our companies, Dave Andonian and Andy Hajducky and so on. And then for each of our business segments we have a person in corporate development who sits on their boards as an observer and works with them day to day to understand their operations intimately, so that he can know how to best leverage the CMGI synergies, to see where the opportunities are to best assist those companies to get bigger faster and be more cost effective and so on. Furthermore, @Ventures has a representative partner assigned to each of the segments so that they understand where the sweet spots are for investment opportunities out there to assist each of the business segments. And by consolidating down to fewer companies, it gives us the ability, I think, to focus better. I think it was necessary to scatter-gather. You know, buy lots of companies and then gather them together and integrate them. We couldn’t wait to build all of the functions necessary, that were needed in each of these segments.

IW: You would have been left behind?

Wetherell: We’d have been left behind. We had the advantage of using our currency—we didn’t have to use a lot of cash. Even though our currency’s been hit, we were able to build a critical mass of revenues and technologies and services that we think have great value going forward. We also tried to start some things that didn’t work. We acquired a total of 34 companies in a 30-month period, and we started another eight companies. That’s 42 companies. On top of that, we invested in another 50 or so on the venture side. That’s a lot to manage. There’s no way to manage that many companies with a company our size. So it required consolidation and integration. And before we had even announced our business segment strategy, we had gone from 42 companies down to 17 without selling one. There was a lot of consolidation going on already. We just weren’t ready to tip our hand as to what the overall plan was, for competitive reasons, number one. Number two, you have to do segment reporting to the markets, and some of those segments early on didn’t have any revenue. It doesn’t do you a lot of good to have segment reporting if you don’t have any revenues to report. But now we have a real critical mass of revenues in each of the segments. We’ve acquired most of the companies we need to acquire in those areas. My guess is on average we’ll probably see—if I had to pick a number—one acquisition per segment per year. But it won’t be anywhere near the pace we’ve done. Not because we can’t afford to. We can.

IW: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from the year 2000?

Wetherell: I would say it’s take more advantage of the markets to raise capital when they’re high than we did. And the strength of the markets when they’re strong. That’s probably the single biggest one. But another is the importance of being diversified, so that you can, in tough times, focus on what’s working. In order to be able to focus on the long term, you need to be successful in the short term and the medium term. And some people say, well, gee, are you being too short-term oriented right now? Well, I think it was Cain who said, “In the long term, we’re all dead.” And so if you aren’t focused on the short term and the medium term, there is no long term.


CMGI - Comeback eines Börsenstars! Thread: CMGI - Comeback eines Börsenstars!

[FATIMAÖ.]

Gigaguru, als ich die Threadüberschrift las, blieb mir der Atem weg. Ich dachte schon, du würdest dir selbst huldigen. LOL

FATIMA Ö.

[Gigaguru]

Ein weiterer Grund für den kurzfristig sehr dynamischen Kursanstieg von CMGI könnte darin liegen, dass die Verbannung ins OTC-BB droht, wenn der Aktienkurs längere Zeit unter 5 US-$ notiert. Möglicherweise wollten somit Fonds den Kurs zunächst auf über 5 US-Dollar bringen, um diese Gefahr abzuwenden. Das scheint einstweilen gelungen zu sein: Der Kurs notiert inzwischen bei über 6 US-Dollar und damit oberhalb der 100-Tage-Linie (die bei etwa 5 US-$ verläuft) und dem mittelfristigen Abwärtstrend seit Anfang 2000:





Charttechnisch betrachtet ist bei CMGI jetzt der Weg bis auf 18 US-$ frei. Dann läuft der Kurs allerdings in eine massive Widerstandszone, da hier der 200-Tage-Durchschnitt und ein sich in den letzten 12 Monaten herausgebildet habender mittelfristiger Abwärtstrend verläuft, darüber hinaus ein horizontaler Widerstand, resultierend aus einem Widerstand von Ende 1998 und einer Unterstützung von Oktober 2000. Ist diese Marke erreicht, wird dann eine grundsätzliche Neubewertung von CMGI unter Berücksichtigung der Restrukturierung des Unternehmens und mehrerer seiner Beteiligungen sowie der sich vollzogen habenden Konsolidierung des gesamten Internetsektors vorzunehmen sein.

Gigaguru