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The Hornets revamping plan

The Hornets are team in disarray.

You remember AOL?  You know…America Online, so easy to use no wonder it's number one?

Someday we will be talking to our children how we paid roughly $20 a month for dial-up internet service. How we used to hear these strange noises upon signing into our computer.  Sounds that even Jim Carey and Jeff Daniels could not imitate in Dumb and Dumber.

Do you remember those free AOL CDs they used to hand out at COMPUSA? Ones that said “Free 1600 Hours for a Month” even though a month only consisted of 720 hours (seriously, I had never seen a CD say less than 1000 free hours for a month…they might as well have gone with one billion, but I guess that’s why I don’t work in marketing).

Not to go off too tangent, but let’s take a deeper look into AOL’s stock prices this past decade. 

In the end of November, 1998, roughly twelve years ago, AOL was selling stock for roughly $12 per share.  People were still late on the internet trail and were suspectible to pay a substantial amount for online service.

One year later, the internet train takes a significant boost and now the AOL stock is selling at roughly $60 per share, yes five times the previous year’s amount

(Tangent Alert: Do you remember Yahoo Finance’s Internet Challenge?  As a youth I played this game and one month decided to put all of the “fantasy dollars” I was given into AOL stock…needless to say I was a fantasy millionaire…wow, what a nerd.)

Finally, a year after that, one decade ago, the unthinkable occurred. 

The internet grew faster than imaginable and AOL profited immensely.  Boy, did they! 

Their stock was now worth a whopping $160 per share!  That’s a 1300 percent increase from just a few years prior!  Exclamation Point!

AOL assumed they would continue to excel. 

They started merging with other high profile companies and started splitting their stock more than a bad date in hopes of people acquiring more overall shares.

AOL was clearly riding a mirage train and they were celebrating the last stop.

Needless to say, AOL would slowly diminish as the years went on. 

Now their stock price is actually non-existent, but their primary take over, Time Warner, is selling at a modest $31 per share. 

Sure, it’s a better price from where they first started, but definitely a disappointment considering the last decade of the company.

My friends, America Online is the New Orleans Hornets.

They were essentially an expansion team after Baron Davis was traded for expiring contracts in 2003. 

Then, Chris Paul came into town and reignited that franchise. 

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