MSTG to be aquired by QNTS:
(COMTEX) B: Quintus Corporation Enters Agreement to Acquire Mustang.c
B: Quintus Corporation Enters Agreement to Acquire Mustang.com; Combined
Customer Base, Technology and Hosted Solution Establishes Market Leadership In
eCRM
FREMONT, Calif., Feb 28, 2000 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Quintus Corporation
(Nasdaq:QNTS), a provider of comprehensive e-customer relationship
management solutions (eCRM), and Mustang.com, Inc. (Nasdaq:MSTG), the
provider of Trusted eService Solutions(TM), today announced that
Quintus has entered into an agreement to acquire Mustang.com in a stock
merger valued at approximately $290 million based on the Nasdaq closing
price of Quintus' common stock on February 25, 2000. With the
acquisition, Quintus will immediately strengthen its eCRM leadership
position by leveraging Mustang.com's award winning e-mail management
products and its recently announced hosted solutions. Quintus believes
that this combined eCRM offering will address the needs of e-businesses
thereby permitting them to build customer loyalty and increase sales
through personalized service.
Under the terms of the agreement, Quintus will exchange .793 shares of
Quintus common stock for each outstanding share of Mustang.com common
stock. This exchange ratio represents a premium of 48% over the Nasdaq
closing price of Mustang.com's common stock on February 25, 2000. All
outstanding options and warrants to purchase Mustang.com common stock
will also be assumed by Quintus, adjusted for the exchange ratio. The
acquisition will be accounted for as a purchase transaction and has
been structured to be tax-free to stockholders. On a fully diluted
basis, Quintus will issue (or reserve) approximately 6.1 million shares
of its common stock representing 13.9% of the combined company. The
acquisition has been approved by the board of directors of both Quintus
Corporation and Mustang.com, Inc. Completion of the acquisition is
subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval
and approval of Mustang.com's shareholders. The acquisition is expected
to be completed in the second calendar quarter of 2000.
"This business combination adds Mustang's e-mail management leadership
to Quintus' existing strength in integrating multiple channels of
customer communication. In addition, Mustang.com's recent announcement
of an Online hosted delivery model will be the basis of Quintus'
expansion of offerings available through this channel," said Alan
Anderson, Chairman and CEO of Quintus. "Quintus eContact Suite provides
a natural extension for Mustang.com customers as they expand from
e-mail management to a solution that fully integrates their existing
telephone contact centers with web live-help. Together Quintus and
Mustang.com have sold over 24,000 e-mail seats, which we believe
establishes clear leadership in the market."
Jim Harrer, founder, President and CEO of Mustang.com, Inc. will become
President of Quintus Online reporting directly to Alan Anderson,
Chairman and CEO of Quintus. "Alan has built an outstanding
organization and we look forward to delivering a powerful eContact
solution that addresses today's critical e-business needs to all our
customers," said Mr. Harrer. "The combination of the Mustang and
Quintus solutions enables us to provide the most comprehensive eService
suite on the market. By integrating e-mail, web live-help,
web-collaboration, CRM and computer telephony integration (CTI) Quintus
is now unmatched in the market."
The Rapidly Expanding eCRM Market Opportunity
According to a June 1999 Forrester Research report, more than eighty
percent of online merchants believe that a single integrated view of
the customer is critical or very important to their business, although
only two percent had implemented such a comprehensive solution. In
addition, The Gartner Group estimates that approximately 25% of all
customer interactions will take place over the Internet via e-mail or
web communications by 2001. A 1999 IDC report forecasts that the e-mail
management market is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth
rate of 63% to become a $342 million market in 2003. In addition,
combining several separate 1999 industry research reports from Frost &
Sullivan, IDC and AMR, the eCRM market which Quintus defines as
including e-mail management, web-enabled contact centers, customer
relationship management (CRM) and computer telephony integration (CTI),
is projected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 47%, to become a
$19 billion market in 2003.
The Integration Challenge
Companies are struggling with managing communications across multiple
channels while the majority of vendors have primarily provided point
solutions targeted at discrete communication channels. Deploying these
disparate solutions requires significant integration and as a result
they can be difficult and expensive to implement and maintain.
Quintus'eContact solution addresses this critical need by integrating
multiple communication channels including phone, e-mail, web live-help,
and voice over the Internet.
The Quintus and Mustang Integrated Solution
The acquisition extends Quintus' leadership position in the rapidly
growing eCRM market. Mustang.com's technology complements Quintus'
offering by providing high-volume, reliable e-mail management,
adherence to open standards, integration with the full range of
standard e-mail environments, and rapid customer deployment. With the
acquisition, Quintus is the only provider of a fully integrated
solution that addresses this entire eCRM market providing users with a
single integrated view of customers across existing and emerging
communication channels.
-- Over 750 customers and over 24,000 e-mail seats
Mustang.com has over 300 customers for its e-mail management
products, including Barclays Bank, Costco, Dow Jones, eStamp.com, GTE,
Lucent, Mail.com, Microsoft, NORDSTROM.com, Playboy.com, Progressive
Insurance, ShopNow.com, Time Warner, 3Com, Victoria's Secret and Virgin
Megastore. Quintus customers include Anheuser-Busch, First Union Bank,
Lucent Technologies, Mercata, Procter & Gamble, REI.com, Sun
Microsystems, Ticketmaster and United Airlines. The combined company
will have over 750 customers, including leading Internet and Fortune
1000 businesses. In addition, Quintus and Mustang.com have deployed
over 24,000 e-mail seats.
-- Integrated products available today
Quintus eContact was first introduced in February 1999 and Quintus is
already deploying multi-channel contact centers. As part of an existing
OEM relationship with Mustang.com, Quintus has already integrated
Mustang Message Center(TM) as the e-mail engine for Quintus eContact,
which provides an integrated solution for e-mail management, web self
help, live help through web-chat and browser-collaboration, voice over
the Internet, and traditional phone calls.
-- Introduction of Quintus OnLine
The acquisition also marks the introduction of Quintus OnLine, a
24x7, mission critical ASP eService solution designed specifically to
remove the infrastructure investment and overhead burdens required to
support world-class eService response centers. Leading businesses and
emerging leaders will ultimately have the ability to offer their
customers the ability to communicate with them through various channels
including e-mail, web live-help and voice over the Internet.
Teleconference Call
A teleconference call is scheduled for Monday, February 28th at 7:30
a.m. PT/10:30 a.m. ET. Domestic dial-in: 1-800-593-7038 and
International: 847-619-6820. The teleconference call name is "Quintus
Corporation".
About Mustang.com
Founded in 1986, Mustang.com was a first provider of e-mail
management solutions with its award-winning Message Center(TM) product.
Introduced in 1997, Mustang Message Center enables loyal, high quality
customer relationships through Internet and e-mail based customer
interactions. Mustang.com is headquartered in Bakersfield, California
with offices in Austin, Chicago, Ft. Lauderdale, Los Angeles, New York,
Phoenix, Seattle and Washington DC. For more information access the Web
at www.mustang.com.
About Quintus
Quintus Corporation (Nasdaq:QNTS) provides a comprehensive e-customer
relationship management (eCRM) solution to manage customer
interactions, such as customer orders, inquiries and service requests,
and deliver consistent customer service across multiple communication
channels, including the Internet, e-mail and the telephone. The Quintus
eContact software suite includes applications that address the needs of
customer service representatives and agents in sales and service,
consumer relations, technical support, and human resources centers and
a routing engine to manage customer interactions. Quintus eContact
enables companies to handle high volumes of customer interactions and
leverage opportunities to sell additional products and services to
their customers. Quintus is based in Fremont, Calif. For more
information about Quintus, call 800/337-8941, e-mail sales@quintus.com
or access the Web at www.quintus.com.
The statements contained in this press release that are not purely
historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section
21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, including statements
based on Quintus Corporation's current expectations, beliefs,
intentions or strategies, as well as a number of assumptions about
future events, and these statements are subject to important factors
and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially
from those described in the forward-looking statements. The
forward-looking statements in this release address a variety of
subjects including, for example, the expected benefits resulting from
the acquisition of Mustang.com Inc. by Quintus. The following factors,
among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from
those described in these forward-looking statements: the risk that the
acquisition of Mustang.com will not be successfully completed; the risk
that Mustang.com's business will not be successfully integrated with
the business of Quintus; and increased competition and technological
changes in the industries in which Quintus and Mustang.com compete. For
a detailed discussion of these and other cautionary statements, please
refer to Quintus Corporation's filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission (the "SEC"), including the Company's registration statement
on Form S-1 declared effective by the Securities and Exchange
Commission on November 15, 1999 and our quarterly report on Form 10-Q
filed on February 14, 2000.
Additional Information and Where to Find It
Quintus plans to file with the SEC a registration statement on Form
S-4 in connection with the merger, and Mustang.com expects to mail a
proxy statement to stockholders of Mustang.com containing information
about the acquisition. Investors and security holders are urged to read
the registration statement and the proxy statement carefully when they
are available because they will contain important information.
Investors and security holders will be able to obtain free copies of
these documents through the website maintained by the SEC at
sec.gov. Free copies of these documents may also be obtained
from Quintus by directing a request through the Investors Relations
portion of the Quintus website at quintus.com or by mail to
Quintus Corporation, 47212 Mission Falls Court, Fremont, CA 94539,
attention: Investor Relations, telephone: 510/624-2890.
Note to Editors: eContact and WebCenter are trademarks and Quintus is a
registered trademark of Quintus Corporation. Mustang.com and Message
Center are trademarks of Mustang.com.
Copyright (C) 2000 Business Wire. All rights reserved.
Distributed via COMTEX.
-0-
CONTACT: Quintus Corporation
Susan Salvesen, 510/624-2890
investor.relations@quintus.com
or
Schwartz Communications, Inc.
Alissa Vasilevskis, 415/512-0770
gitac@schwartz-pr.com
Gita Chandra, 415/512-0770
alissav@schwartz-pr.com
or
Mustang.com
Don Leonard, 661/873-2580
investor@mustang.com
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