| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : DECEMBER 27, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| BUSINESSWEEK INVESTOR -- INSIDE WALL STREET
One-Stop GlobalNet GlobalNet Financial.com (GLBN) may be on the march again. On Apr. 28 it was trading at 27. By August it had skidded to 9--then zoomed to 41 on Dec. 9, before easing to 30 on Dec. 15. Some pros think this torchy Internet stock is headed for new records. The company provides online investment data--including currency and equity trading--mainly in Britain, although it aims to be a big player in all of Europe. ''GlobalNet's mission is to be a one-stop Web financial supermarket,'' says Alan Gaines, who heads Proton Capital, which has a 4% stake. The thrust behind GlobalNet: the deep pockets of its strategic partners, including Britain's Freeserve, an Internet service provider that offers free Web access, and Texas-based Telescan, a provider of Net services and solutions for online technology, along with data-retrieval tools. Freeserve, which trades on the Nasdaq with a market cap of $7 billion, has invested $15 million in GlobalNet, for a 13% stake. In April, GlobalNet launched its first Web site, uk-invest.com, which distributes investment information within Freeserve's Money Channel site. It has since opened financial Web sites in Canada, Italy, and The Netherlands. Telescan owns 8% of GlobalNet, which in turn owns 575,000 shares of Telescan stock, currently worth $13.8 million. Telescan has an option to raise its stake to 19.9%. ''Unlike other Net companies that try to aggregate eyeballs by incurring huge marketing costs, our strategy is to enter into partnerships with the Internet companies that already have millions of subscribers,'' says GlobalNet Chairman Ron Koenig. And, says CEO Stanley Hollander, ''we are in current talks'' with several Net, media, and telecom biggies. Like most other Net companies, GlobalNet is still in the red but expects to make money in 2000. Beeson Gregory, a British research firm, foresees revenues of $143 million in 2001, up from $44 million in 2000. Gaines figures that the sum of GlobalNet's parts far exceeds the stock's price. He sees it tripling in a year. By GENE G. MARCIAL _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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