Back to Basics: Forecasting the Revenues of Internet Firms

摘要: This paper examines the roles played by past revenues, web usage data, and analysts in forecasting future revenues of internet firms during years 1998 to 2000. For this time period our analysis shows that estimates traffic growth have significant incremental value prediction above time-series forecasts. Furthermore, almost always underestimate firms. Historical revenue has predictive power over analysts' forecasts for portal content/community firms, but not e-tailer sample. Moreover, stocks with high historical earn higher abnormal returns sample than do those low growth. Estimates generally predicting either set However, perfect foreknowledge actual would provide power. Collectively, findings point potential purposes both improving upon obtaining more timely reports traffic.