Internet Stock Update: June 2005

Internet Stocks had a relatively poor June thanks largely to poor performance from several large cap names, especially Yahoo and EBay.  Overall, the internet sector was down 4.2% although the average stock was up 4.2% indicating strong performance by small caps.

Two new Internet companies went public this month, both in London.  The first was Party Gaming, the parent of the largest online poker site, Party Poker.  With a $10BN+ market cap it is now the 8th most valuable internet stock on the planet.  The other IPO was FireOne Group, the parent of online payments company, Firepay, which just so happens to get much of its revenues from clients tranferring funds into and out of (but mostly into) online poker rooms.   There are now 4 online gambling related companies trading in London including PartyGaming, SportingBet, Neteller, and Fireone and there will probably be at least a few more by the end of the year.   I have been long SportingBet and Neteller for some time in my "virutal stock portfolio", and I continue to think that the online gambling stocks have real legs.

For a detailed breakdown of all the stock statistics including a record of all of the M&A in the space, click here click to download an Excel spreadsheet with the data and click here to get Microsoft's automatic stock quote downloading plug-in for Excel if you don't already have it.