The Peacock Loses an "i"

Smart Business, August 2001
by Thomas Claburn

"NBCI makes an ambitious portal play" (April, page 52) and finds the door shut soundly in its face. Unexpectedly, minority shareholder NBC put its online namesake out of its misery on April 9. The television network, which owned 38.6 percent of the company, agreed to pay $2.19 for each remaining share, a 46 percent premium over the $1.50 closing price on April 6 and a far cry from the IPO-driven delusion of $100.17 per share on January 28, 2000. Gruntal & Co. VP of equity resources Catherine Skelly says the shot to the head came sooner than expected. "It was a little bit of a surprise to the extent that they did have plenty of cash left to try to turn this thing around," she says. "It was clearly a decision of the mothership to shut it down." In hindsight, Skelly says, big media companies such as NBC should have just invested in the Internet and not tried to capitalize on the IPO boom. NBCi.com now continues to operate under central NBC control.