And as I recall, you posted before that NTBK doubled the number of accounts in just a few month (4 or 5) of this year. Probably, by the time of CF earnings report in August they will double again.
NTBK is growing fast, about 50% a quarter. Wells Fargo online is growing at 20% a quarter. First Union online is growing 20% a quarter. Chase online probably has similar growth numbers. Bank One online is likely growing very fast as well. Many, many new online bankers out there...Yet, Checkfree growing at 6% a quarter. They added fewer than 170,000 accounts last quarter. Wells had nearly that many new online customers, alone. Soon, NTBK may be adding customers faster than Checkfree!
Checkfree stock is down here because they have up until now been unable to execute their strategy. Despite this mass move to online banking, people are NOT signing up for online bill pay, yet. Maybe the portals will bring that growth. I am not so sure. At least I have doubts about 500,000 new customers a quarter, which is required to get to that 5 million by next June.
Why are things taking so long? Checkfree signed-up AT&T over a year ago, yet you still cannot get your bill through E-Bill. What about all this rubbish about big savings to billers? World's largest biller presents bills at own web site, but not yet through E-Bill, Why?
After 17 years in business, and clearly the market leader in this business space, Why does Checkfree take a back seat in the press? Transpoint, and now The Exchange, get more press coverage. And now Princeton Ecom is going public. More CKFR negative comments coming soon from Crafty.
Why does this company get no respect? Why is this company becoming regarded as the 3Com of financial services? Because they have disappointed so many times. About one year ago, Pete Kight forecasted with confidence they would make $0.32/share for fiscal year just ended. Then revised to $0.12/share...then $0.08...now $0.05. Then next year would be good because banks would be online and promoting their web banking services...now, instead, we will see a big loss as we pursue the internet portals. What will follow? Anybody's guess. Big risk if Checkfree alienates banks and fails internet strategy. Profits pushed further out have less current value.
So what about Yahoo!? AOL? eBay? Silence. AOL president talking about AOL 5.0 will add "You've got pictures" and a calendar to product line. No mention of "You've got bills".
For over a year I have been VERY bullish on Checkfree, but now I have personally turned neutral. But I am a bonehead amateur investor (and bad trader, also), so what do I know? Until Checkfree shows they can execute, I think they will remain around their IPO price, which was over 4 years ago!
Luck to us all, and hoping this is not the one bearish post about CKFR that gets quoted in "Heard On The Bo*ards", after 16,000 bullish ones.
Erik (IMHO)
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