Edited: Conversation with Paul Henry on Wednesday, June 27, 2000
First few minutes of our conversation had to do with why the new symbol
change. I knew of companies that went through r/s's before and their symbols
didn't change. Paul said there was a new SEC reg. that tsig was abiding by,
and tsig.com didn't even have any say in the symbol chosen. He didn't
know the specifics of the new reg, and referred to what counsel
said to do to comply with these new SEC regs.
He then asked me what the price was. I told him we were up 40%
or so at the time, but I also asked whether he was allowed to
talk about the price. He said yes, but per SEC regs he couldn't talk about
the price movement (ie. project).
We spoke about the sell-off on Monday, and he theorize that had a lot
to do with shareholders not knowing what had happened to their stock-
e.g. not being able to find a price, et cetera. he said he was inundated
with over 150 emails in two days by people simply asking where is and
what happened to their "tsig" stock.
Then I started to ask some questions about the latest release on
the acquisition of Reliance.
This was rapid fire conversation, so I really didn't have time to take any
notes so I'm solely going by memory. Therefore, I may get some things
incorrect and suggest everyone call and verify.
Paul talked about the Harringtons and the revenues they generated
(I later went and found the background to corroborate his statements
-see posts about Harrington's background excerpts from SEC documents).
Paul said that Reliant despite their sales would have even greater sales
if they didn't have problems with transactions, and follow through.
For example, he said up to 25% of Reliant’s sales failed because
of the poor credit card status of certain customers, and said
this was due to Reliant only using one credit card company to
establish credit for customers. He said w. new arrangement that
customers would be able to get credit cards through other less
stringent issuers.
I asked whether Reliant would be using tsig.com call center. He said no.
But said that Reliant was going to use Affinity's Call center.
I said I thought Affinity per an earlier release was using Tsig's
call center. He said Affinity used some space, but that Affinity's
call center was on the third floor of the other tower. I asked
if this third floor was where the bulk of Affinity's 72 employees were,
and he said he wasn't sure.
We subsequently talked about the synergy between Reliant and Affinity,
and how Affinity will help to maximize per customer sale and also
help target markets better for Reliant's infomercials through
Affinity's data base mining capabilities. Earlier Paul noted that
many of Reliant's infomercials were aired on HSN , a company that
Harrington had a relationship with (again see Harrington's resume).
Next we then spoke about the synergy betw. Reliant and GeneralSearch.
Paul noted that one of the products that Reliant sells the most
of is computers. (I later found the asseenontv.com
web site). Paul noted that all new sales were going to be loaded
with the free GS ISP, launching the new user to the General Search
portal (at least until people figure out to change their target page).
Henceforth Paul then got going into a discussion of the value of
of a search engine and portal per customer. I interrupted him
and asked exactly how this value per customer was derived because
this something I read but had never heard explained.
Paul said that the $1000 dollars or so was derived from
taking the market caps of similar search engine/portals and
dividing the market cap. by the told number of users of that portal.
He said the dollar value has decreased with the correction in the markets
since for those that don't already know, the "market cap" is the total
number of shares multiplied by the total number of shares outstanding.
If share price goes down so does market cap.
Anyway per Paul's comparisons to other portal/engines and
Reliant’s current rate of computer sales, he said is was very conceivable
to have 3 mil sold computer loaded w. GS's ISP (through first net) and
thus by analogy and a very conservative value of $1,000 per user
a theoretical market cap of 3 mil times $1000 or a huge market cap
if priced relative tot he market (I'll let people do their own math).
[Note that the more customers one has, i.e. the more eyeballs, the value
of the advertising and placement of banners and hyperlinks becomes
more valuable. Rates can be raised, plus more money can be derived
from buy throughs to affiliate relationships, and more money is
derived from 1stUP for info gathered and rates of placement on
1stUP's continuous pop up]
Now Paul also kept mentioning that the GS and Reliant synergy
reiterated the "zero acquisition model" since unlike free ISP
and Search engines like Netzero and Lycos, not one dollar
on advertising would have to be spent to get one customer since
all sold computers would have GS pre-loaded.
Now with GS registration, Reliant sales info, and Affinity
utilizing info to data base mine an incredible amount of info
is gathered and analyzed. However, this isn't all.
I then asked Paul, how does "the card" factor into all of this.
Paul said added to the above generated data, is the additional
marketing info gathered from all the different branded card
registrations thus creating a huge database of info to
extrapolate from and utilized for the targeted marketing campaigns
of the specific branded companies, for infomrecial sales,
or basically for targeted sales of just about any product or
service leveraging this database to get
the best pricing with distributors to ensure being the
near or at low cost provider and , thus to retain, grow, and
maximize per customer sales.
I took a deep breath, because, what has been determined
to be the best way to make money on the Internet is the
utilization of customer information for targeted and permission
marketing. branded companies pay big money for this stuff,
because it ultimately saves these branded companies big money to
target rather than mass advertise to the specific
desired demographics.
Thus my next question was about Disney, and I asked in the
tournament still happening. I noted Max Biffi's comments
at the share holder meeting as being the first of many
deals with Disney. Paul wouldn't verify but said there
would be some "expanded" announcement regarding Disney
very "soon". He didn't elaborate on what this was, nor did
I ask or try to probe further.
Paul went on to say that more was also in the works with
Coca Cola and Lufthansa, so these relationships were going
full speed ahead. In my opinion, Paul for a very brief
moment lost his better judgment and told me something he
shouldn't have disclosed about Coke. I'm not
going to elaborate any further on what he said, and will
let any forthcoming PR speak for itself. Since we were talking so
quickly, I believe mild mannered poker face Paul got so
enthused that he revealed some of the cards in his hand
that he should of held tighter to his chest.
Well from this point on in our conversation,
I talked with Paul about pursuing a relationship w.
a company with which I work that got bought by a major
national listed corporation. I won't go into any details
but we spoke about ways in which cards could be sold
at different venues, and during this conversation, Paul
reiterated that the card relationship with Miller
was still brewing.
I thanked Paul for his time, and we both agreed
that things at tsig.com [symbol TIGI] were
really coming together.....FINALLY.
End of report.
If I subsequently remember
anything I forgot, I will issue an addendum.
z |
