Henry Blodget Continues Quotations

While we still believe the model is compelling long term, the business continues to be heavily dependent on airline ticket sales. As a result, it appears management has limited visibility to accurately forecast the business.

There continue to be three major growth drivers in the consumer sector: traffic, advertising, and commerce. Traffic growth in the U.S. continues to slow, as more than 50 percent of the total market is already online. More importantly, we estimate that more than 80 percent of disposable income is already online.

Every hour that the average user spends online, AOL pays for it directly, yet the average user only pays a flat rate of $21.95 a month. So if usage continues to go up, AOL's cost continues to increase and this is something they've started to control over the last several quarters.

The environment continues to worsen versus our expectations, and we continue to think the seasonally weak first quarter will be the toughest quarter in terms of year-over-year growth. We also continue to expect the market to strengthen in the second half of the year, when the impact of the dot.com bubble has worked its way out of the system.