TWST: Could we begin with a brief historical sketch of the company (Nasdaq:ZICA) and then an overview as it is now?
Mr. Kovacs: We began approximately eight years ago. The company has taken on various forms. About five and a half years ago, through an acquisition, we acquired what has been and is today our core technology, which at the time, five and a half years ago, was to solve one daunting task, which was to facilitate native input into machines of various natures by the Chinese population. Our core technology, eZiText™, as we’ve branded it today, was built with that value proposition in mind. Five and a half years ago, we worked very hard on the technology and began to see some results through our sales efforts in China. And approximately four years ago, we struck a significant milestone in the company’s development with the signing of Ericsson, whereby eZiText™ would be embedded onto Ericsson’s mobile products to allow native input by Chinese into their mobile phone for applications and functions such as short messaging, Web browsing and things of that nature. From that point, we have been able been able to build a brand that is recognized globally. We have taken it from one customer and one device in the market to where we are today with eZiText™ at 54 customers and just over 70 devices in the market with eZiText™ embedded onto them. At the end of 2001 eZiText™ was embedded on approximately 20-22 million devices, just in last year alone. We expect that number to be about 40-50 million in the 2002 calendar year.
TWST: Could you give us some of the possible milestones that the company will be passing in the next few years that investors can take note of?
Mr. Kovacs: There are three core areas that we’ve kind of led our growth toward. And I think that these are noteworthy in specifics. First of all, of our 54 customers today, only about 22 have implemented eZiText™ on their devices. That means 32 still are remaining to do implementations. So at our very basic level, that will be about 2 to 2.5 times current revenue from doing nothing more than satisfying customers we’ve already won. I think a more important measurement is not only the number of customers that we have left in our customer base to penetrate, but that the number of devices those customers have implemented in the market represents only about 20% of the total number of devices we can and will be on. The challenge now for us is just to satisfy, from an engineering point of view, their project timelines for implementations, which we are doing very rapidly now. That is a six-fold opportunity for us in just pure revenue growth, without ever having sold another customer or making another sales call. Those are two that we’ve already earned, and we are just rolling out over time. We will see that occur over the next one, two to three quarters. Beyond that, the third aspect is through our research and development and our acquisition strategy. And what we expect, and we’ve set a target, is to triple the revenue from our base case through strategic acquisitions, just by purchasing private companies that have a core technology that we can immediately drop into the channel we’ve already built and have spent eight years building. With that, we have two opportunities in front of us today and many others that are potential, to be able to grow our revenue substantially. So in 2002 I would expect that we are now at the knee of the curve, in terms of our revenue growth, and 2002 is certainly going to be a breakout year, and at the very minimum, will be cash flow positive on an entire year basis. |
