About.com Rumored to Be in Merger Talks With Primedia
DAVID HAFFENREFFER, CNN ANCHOR: A tough week for the Nasdaq last week, down by 5.8 percent. Could have a deal brewing, though. About.com is reportedly in serious talks with the media company Primedia about joining forces. For details, we go right to Sasha Salama, who's over at the Nasdaq Marketsite. Hi, Sasha.</s>SASHA SALAMA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, David. Thanks very much. That's right. An "old economy" company, namely Primedia, which publishes magazines like "Seventeen," possibly getting together with a "new economy" company, About.com. BOUT is the ticker symbol of this information-content Web site. So keep an eye on that stock today, it could be a mover. "The Wall Street Journal" says that Primedia is reportedly in advanced talks with About.com to take it over. In fact, "The Journal" gives chances better than 50-50 of the deal actually going through. And it would reportedly be a $700 million stock deal. We will see if there's anything to this, but in the meantime we are expecting some activity in BOUT, which, as you can see, has been under severe pressure from both its high on the year and year to date. We have got a few companies reporting today in the new-economy arena, losses expected from all of them. One of them, Expedia -- that's the travel site spinoff from Microsoft. We're also expecting results from BarnesandNoble.com and eToys today. Later in the week, we get Qualcomm and Priceline.com. That's Thursday. And tomorrow we get Earthlink -- David.</s>HAFFENREFFER: All right. Sasha, thank you very much.