Henry Blodget Online Quotations

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.

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 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 believe there could be a shakeout in the B2C (business-to-consumer) online retailing sector as companies that have had to spend aggressively to gain new customers will be running out of money.

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.

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

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.