Welcome to the disjunction between debt and Net. Debt analysts worry about whether a borrower will have the cash to make interest payments and to repay principal when it comes due. Internet-stock players couldn’t care less. They value issues based on buzz and perceived potential and name recognition and a lot of measures (including intangibles like “stickiness,” meaning the amount of time an average visitor spends on a Web site) that are related to profit only vaguely. In fact, taking in more money than you spend–the definition of a profit–is almost a sin in some quarters, because it means you’re not “building your brand” as much as you could.
Sloan is NEWSWEEK’s Wall Street editor. His e-mail address is sloan@panix.com.
