Staggering To The First-Half Finish Line

Hey, no one said this comeback stuff would be easy. After pulling out of a two-month tailspin that began in mid-March, Internet stocks this week gave back some of June’s gains.

It’s been rough going, and I expect more of the same through the summer as the shakeout continues. There’s an awful lot of deadwood that needs to be cleared – especially in the e-tail and content sectors – before a lot of sideline money gets back into the game.

This week Internet StockTracker introduces the Wireless Products/Services sector. Most of its inhabitants come from other sectors, though a couple of hardware vendors (Palm and Handspring) are new to the Internet Stock List. Next week we’ll review the first-half performance of each Internet company and sector. Until then, please enjoy a safe July 4 holiday.

Somehow I expected more from this sector in its debut on Internet StockTracker, but only GoAmerica rises to the occasion, leading all ‘Net stocks with a nearly 37% gain through Wednesday’s trading. The wireless ISP gains after announcing a partnership with Electronic Data Systems to offer workers mobile access to data on their corporate networks. Another wireless access provider, Vyyo, reached an all-time high close of $33.44 on Monday, before easing off slightly. VYYO went public in early April. In what is supposed to be the Year of Wireless, Phone.com is down 41%. Faring even worse are wireless software infrastructure provider PUMATECH, down 56% in the YTD, and Metricom, another access provider, which has dropped 64%.

America Online and Time Warner shareholders approve a merger that creates what could be the most powerful digital entertainment company on the planet, and AOL d

rops 11.3%. LookSmart, one of a handful of second-tier (read: eventually doomed) search portals, redesigns its home page and shares rise 12.5%. What’s wrong with this picture? The only other gainer in this group is Lycos, which continues to weather negative vibes about insider trading allegations involving Juan Villalonga, chairman of Telefonica, the Spanish telecom whose Terra Networks Internet unit plans to merge with the U.S.-based portal. SINA.com’s late-May surge, which
twice took shares above $50, is but a distant memory. The Chinese-language portal went public on April 13, closing at $20.69.

Is it possible that this sector hasn’t bottomed out yet? Can you sell stocks at negative prices? We may find out soon enough. They’re abandoning ship at BigStar Entertainment, with several top executives possibility. Pets.com sponsored a Take Your Dog to Work Day last Friday. Maybe they should have let their canine charges run the company for awhile. God may not be dead, but religious e-tailer Crosswalk.com seems anxious to meet its maker. Sobering E-tail Fact No. 1: All 36 of the stocks in this sector trading since the beginning of the year are down. Sobering E-tail Fact No. 2: Only one of 42 e-tail stocks is up over the past three months – Hotel Reservations Network, which has gained 73%. Sobering E-tail Fact No. 3: Exactly one-half of the stocks in this sector are priced below $

3 per share.

Pay no attention to Internet Visa card processor NextCard’s nearly 12% gain this week. The stock is bouncing along the bottom, not gaining genuine momentum. Likewise, Mortgage.com’s gain for the week evaporated Thursday, when shares fell 12% to $1.38. After leading the group last week, ‘Net incubator Internet Capital Group plummets to the cellar. For the year, ICGE is down 79.6%, the biggest drop in the sector. Close behind is online broker Web Street, which has lost 79% of its value since the beginning of the year.

Clearly enjoying its taste of the high life, multi-channel sales software maker FirePond tops the sector and crashes the list of top 10 gainers for the second straight week. Things got even better on Thursday, when FIRE shares soared another 22% on news that the company would be added to the Russell 2000 Index. B2B online employment firm Opus360, which had $1 million in Q1 revenue against a net loss of $25 million, or $1.86 per share, benefits from an apparent bout of investor amnesia (which went away Thursday, when OPUS shares fell 11.5%).

V-One’s stock chart looks like the woozy flight path of a plane piloted by a drunk – up, down and all around. Lately VONE has been gaining altitude, with a performance this week that just misses making the list of top 10 gainers and a 64% climb in the past month. I can’t discern any catalysts, however, other than the general strength of this sector, which once again posts the best weekly mark and includes only one company whose stock has gone down in the past month. That company, Network-1 Security, appears to be returning to sub-$5 per share form after several months of flying too close to the sun.