Prudential picks Tumbleweed secure e-mail software
July 25, 2000 02:45 PM
PALO ALTO, Calif., July 25 (Reuters) - Tumbleweed Communications Corp. TMWD said on Tuesday that Prudential Securities Inc. had selected its software to deliver secure online messaging. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
Redwood City, Calif.-based Tumbleweed, which also makes software to transmit e-mails securely via the Internet, has already announced that other brokerages are using its software. Eventually, brokerages and other industries that still are required to send via U.S. mail trade confirmations and the like will use software from Tumbleweed and others.
"Establishing a two-way communications channel with our customers online is vital to our success," said Jim Burke, senior vice president, corporate development for PrudentialSecurities.com in a statement.
Tumbleweed on July 20 reported a narrower-than-expected second-quarter loss, excluding goodwill and stock compensation costs. The company said that for the period ended June 30 it had a net loss excluding the unusual items of $8.0 million, or 31 cents a share. Sales rose to $10.1 million from $3.6 million.
On that basis, analysts had forecast Tumbleweed to report a loss of 31 cents a share, according to First Call/Thomson Financial, which tracks such figures. Tumbleweed beat the sales forecast of $9.2 million.
Including the one-time items, Tumbleweed had a loss of $9.53 million, or 37 cents a share, compared with a loss of $5.71 million, or 79 cents, a year ago.
"We are growing faster than any analyst anticipated, yet we are not spending more money than anticipated to achieve these results," Jeff Smith, Tumbleweed's chairman, wrote to Reuters in an e-mail.
Transaction revenue, or the portion of sales that Tumbleweed collects for each sure message that is delivered, surged to $1.5 million, more than double the first quarter's $730 million. Sales of new software was $6.8 million in the second quarter, up from $2.4 million a year ago |
