Comdex owner is in transition

Comdex, the Las Vegas exhibition that is the king of computer trade shows and the jewel in the crown of its sponsor, ZD Events, opened today for the 20th consecutive year.

In those two decades, Comdex has grown from a humble gathering of technology fans into the flagship in an international armada of trade shows. Even now, ZD Events is erecting booths in Israel for the opening of the first Comdex/Israel 99 show on Nov. 30 and mapping logistics for the third Expo CommChina South, which opens the same week in Guangzhou. A week later, it's the fourth annual Comdex India show in New Delhi.

The sun, it seems, never sets on the ZD Events empire. Virtually every week, somewhere in the world, the company is setting up or tearing down a computer trade show. Today, ZD Events produces 100 shows, including 22 Comdexes, in 25 countries, and this year it is adding a show in Greece as well as in Israel. Next on its list of target markets are Sweden, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey.

Comdex in Las Vegas is the undisputed top dog, the world's largest computer trade show. ZD Events says it expects the event, which attracted 4,000 computer enthusiasts and dealers in 1979, to draw roughly 202,000 people this year.

But a huge transition is under way for Comdex.

The glory days of the one-size-fits-all computer show are past, replaced by smaller, more focused gatherings -- an enormous and still-growing crop of executive seminars and single-subject conferences. As the high technology industry enters the post-PC era in which the Internet is king, it is hardly surprising that a decidedly PC-centric trade show would face substantial change.

"Where people get their information is changing," said Alan Meckler, who founded the popular series of Internet World shows before selling to Penton Media Inc. last year. "The problem that Comdex has is that the PC is finished as an innovator."

And with the Internet supplying customers with up-to-the-minute product information and industry news, they no longer must attend conventions to stay up to date.

"It's part of our branding campaign to try to put Comdex at the epicenter of all decisions about technology relating to the Internet economy," said Peter Shaw, executive vice president of ZD Events, which is part of Ziff-Davis Inc., the leading publisher of computer magazines.

In 1995, Interface Group, the company that founded the show, sold its trade show division to Softbank, the Japanese conglomerate, for $800 million. Within a year, Softbank also bought a majority stake in Ziff-Davis, eventually merging the two operations. Today, Softbank owns 70 percent of Ziff-Davis, which operates ZD Events as one of five units. Ziff-Davis stock, which went public in May 1998, has fluctuated widely in price in the last year - from just above $8 a year ago to a high of $29 last March and a closing price of $17.1875 last Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.

Another Ziff-Davis unit, ZDNet, tracks its stock separately.

In July, after Softbank announced that it would focus on Internet-only companies, Ziff-Davis said that it had hired investment bankers to help it sell off its business units. Softbank has already sold off Ziff-Davis' market research business to Harte-Hanks for $101 million in cash.

Shaw said several potential suitors had expressed interest in buying all or parts of Ziff-Davis, though he declined to name them.

While Ziff-Davis has been steadily losing money the last few years, its losses have narrowed recently. For the third quarter, the company lost $14.9 million, compared with a loss of $27.6 million for the quarter last year. Revenue rose 10 percent, to $232 million.

The company's trade show division accounted for much of the improvement; 23 percent of Ziff-Davis' revenue came from ZD Events. Besides Comdex, ZD Events' other big brands include Network(PLUS)Interop, which is geared to network managers, and Seybold Seminars, a series of shows related to desktop publishing.

Despite uncertainty over its ownership, ZD Events continues to open new shows abroad, typically with local business partners familiar with the trade show landscape. In India, for example, the show organizer is Business India Expositions, an 11-year-old event-management company.

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