- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday March 14 2000 17.09 GMT
Lastminute.com is a remarkable company, remarkable website and a remarkable business concept. It has grown fantastically in 18 months and is a British first. Its brand name is already one of the best-known on the web, made better-known by the events of the floatation. It is reaping all the benefits of first entry. And its founders are inspirational and entrepreneurial. The question is not any of that; it is whether it is worth over £5 a share, valuing it at some £750 million.
My view is that it is not. The valuation is absurd, part of a worldwide fashion for anything to do with the new economy and the internet - and dangerous. I suspect that Martha Lane Fox is right: Lastminute will be one of the internet companies with long run prospects that may succeed. But granted that, I cannot believe it is right to value at such a price a company with so few assets and such a long prospect of not paying profits and dividends.
What is happening is the doctrine of the greater fool. We know the price of internet companies is absurd, but buyers expect the price to become more absurd tomorrow. Hence the bubble, in its essence like any other of the great manias in history, and which is affecting internet shares in every western stockmarket. It will be pricked, and in the United States the price correction will affect the whole stock exchange and potentially - interacting with the trebling in the oil price - trigger an economic downturn. So beware.
Even if Lastminute is a worldbeater there will be opportunities to buy it cheaper than today.
