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The New York Times Co. has unloaded almost all of its shares in financial news site TheStreet.com for $3.2 million. In doing so, the Times took what it calls a "very small loss." In all, the Times sold 1.425 million shares; it still owns 125,000 shares, which are worth $312,500 as of Monday evening. The company first invested in TheStreet.com in February 1999, and established a joint newsroom shortly thereafter. In November 2000, the Times terminated the newsroom arrangement. The dot.com downturn has roughed up both TheStreet.com and the New York Times Co.’s internet branch, New York Times Digital. TheStreet shuttered its United Kingdom operations in November, in addition to its waves of mass firings Stateside. New York Times Digital, meanwhile, announced this weekend that it is firing 17 percent of its staff.
Excite@Home backs out
of Pogo purchase
High-speed ISP Excite@Home says it has ended its agreement to buy game
site Pogo.com. Even though the acquisition deal has fallen through,
Pogo.com will still supply games to Excite users. Additionally,
Excite@Home will keep the 10 percent equity stake it holds in Pogo.com.
Excite@Home says it is terminating the deal because Pogo was unable to
meet certain conditions. The companies didn’t provide any details about
what those conditions might have been. Pogo.com, which launched in 1998,
offers games and other entertainment ranging from chess to mock casino
games and trivia. Pogo services are available on sites such as iWon.com,
iWin.com, Go.com, iVillage.com and About.com. The company claims it reaches 70
percent of the U.S. web audience and draws 30,000 new member registrations
a day.
Women.com gets delisting warning
The Nasdaq Stock Market has warned women’s portal Women.com Networks that it faces
de-listing from the stock index. As of Jan. 4, the day the company
received the warning, shares in Women.com had been trading at less than $1
for 30 consecutive days. Women.com has until March 28 to boost its
stock price. If Women.com shares trade at a price of at least $1 for 10
days in a row between now and then, Nasdaq will evaluate whether or
not Women.com should remain on its list. Including employee stock
compensation, amortization and losses on investments, Women.com lost $29.9
million for the third quarter of 2000 on revenues of $8.8 million. As a
result of the losses, Women.com fired a quarter of its work force in early
December. Monday, Women.com shares closed at 7/16. A recent de-listing letter
proved to be another nail in the coffin for bilingual Latino site
Quepasa.com, which shut down about a week after it received the warning in
late December.
Kozmo shuts San Diego,
Houston service
Online courier/delivery service Kozmo.com has ceased its Houston and San
Diego operations as of last Friday. About 120 people, or 6 percent of
Kozmo’s 2,000-person work force, will lose their jobs as a result of the
closings. According to Kozmo, demand for its services was too low to be
sustainable in the two cities. Kozmo delivery began in May in Houston and
in August in San Diego. The service offers same-day delivery of products
such as videos, toiletries and snacks to users who order them via the
Kozmo web site. The service has turned a profit in New York, the city
where it was born, and San Francisco. Kozmo’s Boston, Seattle, and
Washington, D.C. operations are said to be near profitability. The service
is also offered in Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore.
Ameritrade joins the
layoff parade
Internet stock trading site Ameritrade will slash 230 jobs--about 9
percent of its staff. According to Ameritrade, the layoffs stem from a
drop in market volume over the past few months. In other words, people
aren’t buying and selling stocks as often as they once did, which is bad news
for a discount brokerage. Workers in the company’s outpost in Fort
Worth, Texas, and its Omaha, Neb., headquarters will lose their jobs.
Ameritrade, which says it has about 1.3 million members, expects to lose
up to 14 cents a share for the first quarter of this year; analysts had
expected a loss of 5 cents per share. Hard times aside, the site says it’s
growing. Ameritrade reports that the average daily trading volume during
December was 115,000 trades a day--a 10 percent rise over the same month
in 1999. Also, 52,000 new accounts were opened in December, a 30 percent
jump over November.
First accredited online MBAs granted
The University of Baltimore has just cranked out the first graduates of
its online MBA program. The University of Baltimore’s web-based program
was launched in 1999; it marks the first online MBA offered by an
accredited business school. At six people, the online class is about 1/130th
the size of any given class at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton
School. Baltimore’s online MBA shares faculty and a curriculum with the
university’s brick-and-mortar Merrick School of Business. The graduates
of the program had not met one another until the commencement ceremony in
Baltimore on Sunday. The students, who ranged in age from their late 20s
to late 40s, studied online from as far away as Massachusetts and
Florida. As they studied, the Baltimore
MBA candidates maintained their careers; among the graduates were a
medical technician and a security guard.
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