Word: comcasts
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...Comcast venture is Microsoft's attempt to push its content beyond the computer literate and into the mass market. Two months ago, Gates paid $425 million for WebTV Networks, which makes set-top boxes that allow Internet surfing through TV sets. "Gates is really confirming that the Internet is a medium, not a technology," says Christopher Dixon, a media analyst at Paine Webber. "They have content and need distribution. The key is that Microsoft has accelerated the development of opportunities in line with its prior investments...
Roberts is positively gleeful that he didn't cave in earlier to shareholder pressure to ease some of Comcast's $7.3 billion debt in the face of what seemed to be declining returns and increasing competition. "People thought satellites would come and wipe out cable," says Roberts. "We thought that if we provided good service and lots of channels, and later offered digital service, we would have a whole new business." And it doesn't hurt one bit that Bill Gates has the very same vision...
...into the cable industry and single-handedly rescues one of the decade's most imperiled collections of stocks. Who is this new-age superhero? None other than Supergeek, a.k.a. the mild-mannered computer kingpin, Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft. Last week, after Gates agreed to pump $1 billion into Comcast Corp., Wall Street revalued the entire industry upward by tens of billions of dollars. A buyers' panic rippled through the cable world, and the Standard & Poor's index of cable stocks rose...
Anyone paying attention could have seen these things happening, but it took an event like Gates' investment in Comcast to drive it all home. "In one day there's an epiphany," observes the FCC chairman, Reed Hundt. Gates is the premier techno-futurist of our time. "He's saying what's past is past--this is the future," notes media analyst John Reidy at Smith Barney. Some cable executives may now enjoy vindication for their expensive strategies, and investors may reap the rewards for their patience--although cable stocks have been so horrible that they'll have to shoot much...
...fleeting. The best way to win is to hunt for good companies that are out of favor. Then wait. If they really are good, the herd will find them, usually after some event calls attention to what the crowd has been missing--like Gates writing a check to Comcast. That's the way Warren Buffett invests. Buffett--one of Gates' buddies, by the way--wouldn't touch most cable stocks because of the debt. But then he's never dabbled much in technology stocks because he finds them confusing. Gates, on the other hand, knows a thing or two about...