The Digest Homestore Again Restates Revenues Westlake Village-based Homestore.com Inc. announced that it has completed its accounting inquiry, and filed its restated results for 2000 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company determined that a total of $36.4 million in revenue had been recorded as cash transactions, when they actually should have been recorded as reciprocal exchanges and barter. The company’s accounting woes have resulted in a complete management changeover as well as widespread layoffs. Most recently, Richard Smith, the chairman and chief executive of Cendant Corp.’s real estate unit, has resigned from the Homestore board of directors. Cendant, Homestore’s biggest shareholder with an 18.5-percent stake, is the franchiser of Coldwell Banker, Century 21 and ERA residential brokers. The New York-based company acquired the stock when it sold its Move.com division to Homestore in February 2001 for $575 million. Cendant wrote down the value of its Homestore holdings to zero last month. Smith’s departure reduces the number of Homestore directors to seven. Homestore announced in December that its board was looking into its accounting practices. The company later said that it overstated revenue by as much as $45 million during 2000 and as much as $113 million in the first three quarters of 2001. The inquiry led to the resignation of Chief Executive Stuart Wolff. ValueClick Merges With Be Free Inc. Westlake Village-based ValueClick Inc. and Be Free Inc. of Marlborough, Mass. have entered into a merger agreement. The combined company will be named ValueClick Inc. and continue to be headquartered in Westlake Village. The merger, approved by both boards of directors, provides that each share of Be Free common stock will be converted into the right to receive 0.65 shares of ValueClick common stock. The merger, anticipated to close by July, must still be approved by stockholders of both companies. When the merger is completed, Be Free’s stockholders will own approximately 45 percent of the combined company’s outstanding shares. The combined company will offer an array of online and offline technology and media services. ValueClick has acquired five companies in the past two years, most recently Mediaplex, best known for its MOJO ad serving and eCRM technology, and AdWare Systems, a provider of agency management software. ValueClick’s previously announced 2002 revenue guidance was $60 million; Be Free’s previously announced 2002 revenue guidance was $23 million. WellPoint Announces Stock Split The WellPoint Health Networks Inc. board of directors has approved a two-for-one split of the company’s common stock. The stock split will be in the form of a stock dividend of one additional share of WellPoint stock for each share held. The stock split was effective March 15 for stockholders of record on March 5, 2002. Dole Plans Hotel Dole Food Co. will build a hotel and spa near its Lindero Canyon Road headquarters. The project, which includes a restaurant and retail facilities, would be built on half of Dole’s 20-acre site, with its offices on the other half. Dole’s builder, Castle and Cooke, has five possible designs, although the preferred concept calls for a seven-story, 280-room hotel with a health spa and a 468-space parking garage. The hotel would be an independent facility and not part of a chain. Santa Clarita Gravel Operation Dumped The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously rejected a concrete company’s plans for a sand and gravel mine in the Santa Clarita area. The supervisors turned down Transit Mixed Concrete’s appeal of a county Regional Planning Commission decision that denied the company a mining permit for the 460-acre Soledad Canyon project. Transit Mixed, owned by Mexico-based mining giant Cemex, has federal approval to extract 78 million tons of material from federal land east of the Antelope Valley Freeway. It would be the largest gravel mine in the nation. Critics say the mine would damage air quality, deplete water resources and endanger wildlife along the Santa Clara River. Transit Mixed officials say the mine would not harm the environment, and is needed to meet the demands of the local building industry. In January, the company filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court that seeks to force the county to issue the mining permit, which the planning commission denied in August 2000.