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Excite@Home made a disclosure on Monday in an amendment to its annual report, which it initially filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in April, that the company may not be able to continue operations. Shares of the company closed down 41 cents, or 47 percent, to 46 cents Monday.
Excite@Home is struggling to remain operating, as a "going concern". Essentially this means the company is running out of cash needed to operate, faces delisting on NasDaq for trading under $1, and debts are mounting that Excite@Home may not be able to afford to pay back.
Currently trading at .47 cents with 25 million shares traded today on Tuesday, August 20, 2001, Excite@Home may indeed cease to operate. AT&T, a major investor in Excite@Home has not commented on Excite@Home, and probably won't infuse them with anymore money as AT&T also may sell it's AT&T Broadband unit.
Excite@Home has few options, sell it's assets including debt, file for Bankruptcy, or perform a risky reverse stock split. A reverse stock split could place Excite@Home over the $1.00 trading mark, but essentially lessens it's value by limiting the number of shares available.
If Excite@Home is delisted it's likely to declare bankruptcy, said Merrill Lynch analyst Henry Blodget in a research note. "Our existing cash and other liquid assets may not be sufficient to fund operations through the end of 2001," the company said in its filing. "We cannot guarantee that we will be able to obtain additional funding on acceptable terms, if at all."
Even with a Chapter 11 filing, and a following restructuring/sell, Excite@Home has $1 billion in debt and only $400 million of hard assets. This could indeed spell the end to Excite@Home.
Right now, Excite@Home shareholders have approved the reverse stock split, but it doesn't look like that will do the trick for Excite@Home.
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