@Home Network

Operated as High Speed Cable Internet Service provider from 1998 to 2002. Founded by Cable companies TCI, Comcast, and Cox Cable and William Randolph Hearst III as a venture to produce high speed cable internet service through 2 way television cable infrastructure. These cable companies refered to as MSO's or Multiple Service Operators. Tele-Communications Inc. ... Comcast Corporation, (NASDAQ: CMCSA) based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the largest cable company and the largest broadband (second overall) Internet service provider in the United States. ... William Randolph Hearst III (born June 1, 1949) became president of the William Randolph Hearst Foundation in early 2003, and is a grandson of William Randolph Hearst and director of the Hearst Corporation. ...

At the companies peak it provided High Speed Internet service for 4.1 Million subscribers in the US, Canada, Japan, Australia and Benelux.

Headquarters were located at 450 Broadway Redwood City California, USA.

History

The Passing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 enabled cable companies to start to offer Phaone in Internet services to The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major overhaul of United States telecommunications policy in nearly 62 years, modifying earlier legislation, primarily the Communications Act of 1934. ...

On July 11, 1996 @Home Network's went public with an initial public offering of $10.50 a share and raised $94.5 million in capital by the end of the first day with 9 million shares issued. In the SEC report for the Initial public offering was a cash fow positive revenues of $1.8 million for the first six months of 1997 with a loss of $22.8 million, up from $8.3 million the year before. Underwriters were Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and Hambrecht & Quist.

@Home Network was founded

Excite Acquisition

In December 1998 Excite was in serious merger negotiations with Yahoo! inc in an agreement to purchase the Excite portal for a price between $5.5 billion and $6 billion. On Dec. 19, at Kleiner Perkins prompting @Home Network's Chairman and Chief Executive Thomas Jermoluk met with Excite’s Chairman and Chief Executive George Bell, according to documents filed with the SEC and a deal was hashed out for the purchase of Excite and it’s debt. 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... Yahoo! Inc. ... Kleiner Perkins is a famous silicon valley venture capital firm. ... George Antonio Bell Mathey (born October 21, 1959, San Pedro de Macorís, Dominican Republic) was a Major League Baseball player. ...

On January 19, 1999, Excite was acquired by @Home Networks; the largest high speed cable Internet service provider. The $6.7 billion merger became one of the largest mergers of two Internet companies ever; the combined entity would marry the profitable high speed internet network of @Home and expand its existing Home.com portal with Excite’s search engine and Internet portal. The combined entity external name became Excite@Home however the stock symbol and regulatory filing records remained properly known as At Home Corporation (ATHM). 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ...

A side effect of the deal @Home’s Chairman and Chief Executive George Tom Jermoluk (also called T.J. for short) stepped down as Chief Executive Officer, but remained Chairman of the board and Excite’s former Chairman and Chief Executive George Bell who was the President of the Excite division of @Home, moved over as Chief Executive of the new Excite@Home entity.

The new Excite devision took the existing @home.com web portal that was provided to subscribers of the service and merged it with the Excite portal. Along with this was the movement toward personalized web portal content, a concept now commonplace in all internet portals today.

In just months following the merger Excite@Home's Excite devision purchased iMall for about $425 million in stock. Most significant of these was purchase of the online greeting card company Blue Mountain Arts, Excite@Home issued 11.2 million shares, worth close to $430 million, and paid $350 million in cash. In addition Excite paided for sponsorship of Infiniti Indy car driver Eddie Cheever, Jr., through the 2000 and 2001 Indy racing seasons for an undisclosed amount.

On June 10th 1999 the @Home cable division announced a joint venture with Australia with Cable & Wireless Optus to form a new company, AtHome Network Australia. The projected homes past for the deal was 2.2 million.

The merger between Excite and @Home fell disastrously short of expectations though, the stock once soring at $128.34 a share in the first quarter of 1999 and had a market cap of $35 billion; had fallen to $1 a share by the third quarter of 2001 when the company formerly filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The new Chief Executive George Bell worked from his home in Massachusetts and the Chief Financial Officer Mark McEachen lived in LA, flying in only once per week to the bay area to conduct business, both executives were part of the former Excite executive team. More significantly, expenses ran far ahead of revenues. The burst of the dot-com bubble in March of 2000 and the subsiquent collapse of internet advertising market further limited the company's prospects by making it harder to raise investor money to keep the company afloat in the absence of retained earnings. By 2001, the company was running out of cash. The Dot-com bubble (or dot-com speculative bubble) refers to the approximately four years of time (1997–2001) in which stock markets in Western nations had their value increase rapidly and most significantly in the technology and new Internet sector. ...

On September 21, 2000 George Bell stepped down as Chief Executive Officer and reprised his role as President of the Excite devision. The stock was trading at $15.38 a share a drop of 90% of the companies evaluation during his leadership. On April 23, 2001 Patti S. Hart, the former Chief Executive Officer of Telocity joined Excite@Home as its 3rd CEO and @Home's 4th. In the same announcement Current Chairman George Bell resigned and left the company completely. The news was not good as the company also reported first-quarter net loss of $61.6 million, or 15 cents per share, on revenue of $142.8 million compared with a loss of $4.6 million, or 1 cent, on revenue of $138 million in the same period the prior year.

On June 11, 2001 Excite@home announced what it had raised $100 million in fresh financing from the Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co. Part of the deal not widely disclosed was that the loan was repayable immediately if Excite@Home stock is delisted by Nasdaq.The loan, structured as a note convertible into shares of Excite, had an interest rate of zero. The key aspect of the deal was that Prometheus gain first dibs on Excite's assets.

By August 20, 2001, they fired their auditor firm Ernst & Young replacing them with PricewaterhouseCoopers the same firm used for two decades by AT&T. In addition they, received a demand for the immediate repayment of $50 million in debt from convertible bond holder Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co. At the same time both Cox Cable and Comcast announced that they would seperate from the Broadband Internet service by Q1 of 2002. Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional services firms in the world, and a Big 4 accountancy firm, along with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and KPMG // History The firm as we know it today is the result of a series of mergers of ancestor organizations. ...

On September 13, 2001 Excite@Home sold Blue Mountain Arts for $35 million toto American Greetings at less than 5% of what they had paid less than two years earlier.

On October 1, 2001 the company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California. The companies remaining 1,350 employees would be layed off over the following months into the first quarter of 2002. As part of the agreement @Home's national high-speed fiber network access would be sold back to AT&T for $307 million in cash. At Home Liquidating Trust, became the successor company to Excite@Home charged with the sale of all assets of the former company.

Joint Ventures

Cable & Wireless Optus @Work @home Solutions

External links

References