From Briefing.com ...
Net2Phone Inc. (NTOP) 70 7/8 +17 3/4: Hambrecht & Quist reiterates "buy" rating on provider of voice-enhanced Internet communications services after NTOP announces that Sprint will trial Net2Phone's Voice over IP technology and international network for international consumer long distance calls to Asia ...
From Bloomberg ...
The Sprint agreement, announced today, is the latest in Hackensack, New Jersey-based Net2Phone's strategy to expand its services internationally. Yesterday, Compaq agreed to link international users of its Presario PCs with Net2Phone's service. ``We're doing things that are unique, that nobody else is doing,' Chief Executive Howard Balter told the Bloomberg Forum yesterday.
Acquisitions?
Net2Phone earlier this month agreed to work with General Electric Co.'s NBC television network, Cnet Inc. and the Internet site jointly owned by those two companies, Snap.com. Those companies took unspecified equity stakes in Net2Phone.
Balter also said that Net2Phone could buy companies to improve its technology and the speed of its service. ``If we would do an acquisition, it probably would be to accelerate the rollout of products by buying technology companies,' he said.
Net2Phone isn't currently in talks with acquisition targets, Balter said. Likely purchases would be software makers and others with products that would complement Net2Phone's services, he said.
Net2Phone's technology can enable online shoppers to talk to sales representatives at Internet stores by clicking a button on retailers' World Wide Web sites. ``When you buy Net2Phone, what you're really buying is not IP telephony, but the voice enablement of the Web,' said Michael Bowen, an analyst at Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown who rates the company's shares ``buy.'
300,000 Users
Net2Phone plans to spend $50 million over the next 18 months to market its services. It now has 300,000 so-called active users, or customers who've paid for the service at least once in the past three months.
It cost the company $7 million to sign up those users, and that was without the benefit of distribution agreements like those now in place with Compaq and others, Balter said. Spending seven times as much over the next year and a half should enable the company to double its customer base ``or maybe even hit a million (customers) within that time period,' he said.
Net2Phone expects the distribution agreements to help boost revenue to $40 million this year and $80 million in 2000, Balter said. The company expects revenue to cover operating expenses at the beginning of 2002.
Net2Phone intends to take full advantage of convergence, the coming unification of phone, cable and computer networks. ``What we may be in the future is a combination of a phone company, a content company, a value-added services company -- so we could be a combination of a Microsoft, AT&T, and a cable company all wrapped into one,' Balter said. |
