Henry Blodget Continue Quotations

While we still believe the model is compelling long term, the business continues to be heavily dependent on airline ticket sales. As a result, it appears management has limited visibility to accurately forecast the business.

We continue to think there is long-term upside potential for the stocks of the leading companies in the Internet sector. Although we acknowledge the potential for appreciation over the intermediate term, we strongly believe that volatility remains a significant risk over this same timeframe and we would stress the long term.

We continue to think some upside is possible to these estimates, despite weakness in the online advertising market. We are not looking for as much upside as in the past, however.

We continue to believe Yahoo! will make a good long-term investment. As a result of the challenging advertising environment, however, we believe the stock could see significant downside in the next three to six months.

We continue to believe that there is no legal or competitive justification for blocking the deal.

We continue to believe that the first quarter will be the toughest quarter for online advertising. We expect market growth of only 10 percent year-over-year. We believe growth will then accelerate modestly through the year.

We expect the challenging environment for online advertising to continue into the second quarter 2001, three-to-six months longer than we had originally expected. Because of this, we are not able to raise our bottom line estimates.

The sentiment surrounding the leading companies in the consumer Internet sector appears to be improving as we approach the seasonally strong fall and winter period. We continue to believe that some of the leading consumer advertising and e-commerce stocks -- America Online, Yahoo, and Amazon.com -- will benefit from this.

We continue to view OXP as a 'nice-to-have,' not a 'must-have,' especially in a weak economy. We have therefore baked only modest impact from the launch into our estimates.

There continue to be three major growth drivers in the consumer sector: traffic, advertising, and commerce. Traffic growth in the U.S. continues to slow, as more than 50 percent of the total market is already online. More importantly, we estimate that more than 80 percent of disposable income is already online.

The environment continues to worsen versus our expectations, and we continue to think the seasonally weak first quarter will be the toughest quarter in terms of year-over-year growth. We also continue to expect the market to strengthen in the second half of the year, when the impact of the dot.com bubble has worked its way out of the system.

As the shakeout continues, we continue to believe that the Internet spoils will go to the few, not the many. As one investor we respect put it, anytime a new industry emerges, many turtles hatch, few make it to the sea.

At the same time, however, we continue to be discouraged by one basic trend: a steady increase in our loss estimates without a correspondingly large increase in revenue or profitability estimates.

We continue to believe in the long-term growth of online advertising. Near-term, however, we don't believe the market will bottom until the first quarter. We estimate only single-digit year-over-year market growth in the first quarter.

...This consolidation and shakeout in the space will continue for the next few months but longer-term will bode very well for industry leading companies like Amazon.

Every hour that the average user spends online, AOL pays for it directly, yet the average user only pays a flat rate of $21.95 a month. So if usage continues to go up, AOL's cost continues to increase and this is something they've started to control over the last several quarters.

After re-analyzing Amazon's cash and liquidity, we remain comfortable with it. Amazon needs to stay on track to turn an operating profit in Q4, but as long as several key trends continue to improve, we consider a squeeze very unlikely.

We do not expect significant upside to our estimates. As we have said before, we believe the company is going through an awkward transition from a hyper-growth, revenue momentum story to a long-term growth and earnings story. Despite its growing pains, we continue to believe long-term, patient investors will be rewarded.

The big question mark remains the long-term sustainable growth rate, especially with continued deceleration of U.S. business.

The online advertising market appears to be stabilizing, but we believe it will continue to remain challenging for the foreseeable future.

We think the Internet is tremendously profound. It will continue to have an effect on the global economy over the next five-to-10 years. But there's no way that it is a large enough opportunity to support the 400 companies that have gone public. And I think if you look back in history at different emerging industries, we've often had this feeling that the PCs for example are going to change the world. All you have to do is buy a PC company and you're safe. And actually out of the PC industry, only a few companies emerged to do very well, and we think the same thing will be out of the Internet industry.

Near-term, in a market environment in which investors are fleeing to quality, its stock could continue to do well. Our analysis, however, suggests that the company's long-term earnings growth is likely to be slower than the 15 percent to 20 percent consensus.

We would therefore remain cautious about adding new money to online advertising-driven stocks until the first or second quarter, when we should have better visibility. We continue to believe that the first quarter will be the toughest quarter, with only 10 percent year-over-year growth.