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CEOs on CNNfn
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April 17, 2000: 9:06 p.m. ET
StarMedia CEO Espuelas sees little Web competition in Latin America
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - In a shaky time for dot.coms, StarMedia President and Chief Executive Officer Fernando Espuelas asserted Monday that his company was in a good position in the growing Latin American market, despite the pounding the stock has taken this year.
"We're number one ... we're bigger than all of our competitors combined, actually, in terms of sales, in terms of traffic," Espuelas told CNNfn's N.E.W. Show.
But he added: "I don't want to see [our stock chart] again any time soon."
Espuelas owns 21 percent of StarMedia, the largest Web portal serving Latin America.
Despite growing competition in the Latin American Internet market, Espuelas does not see anybody as a direct threat to StarMedia's dominance.
"We've always had competitors, just none of them have emerged," he said.
Espuelas explained that growth in Latin America's Internet and wireless markets is huge and StarMedia's brand is already developed and recognized. (470K WAV or 470K AIFF)
He also added that while a loss of dot.com competition could hurt barter revenues in the sector, most of StarMedia's barter revenue comes from traditional media companies and should drop as a percentage of total revenue from 14 percent to 10 percent by the end of the year.
"We see very high growth in our business, and I think a lot of the issues that people are feeling really do not apply to us," he added. 
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StarMedia
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