Another post from Yahoo. More interesting.
I attended the Major Video Concepts show here in nashville yesterday. Met Ray Swartzman, VP of sales. The kiosk itself is excellent. I've seen others for music etc.. and this one is of far higher quality.
They did have a big deal that fell through, osft proposed a joint press release and the company decided instead to void the contract. It was Buena Vista video. They should have a deal soon with another major house similar to their deal with Polygram. I dont want to give the name at this time, but you could say that this company is "all encompassing". They also should be announcing one, maybe two more large chains of stores who will be using the kiosks. OSFT should also soon be branching out into other media such as books, music and games on their kiosks. Their is a very distinct possibility that there will be an announcement on a bookstore/book distributor type deal that will cause some fast and furious interest in the stock. These deals above are what DRSB was talking about when he said the May/June timeframe.
They are still offering the kiosks on a free trial basis to all takers. The only source of revenue at this time is from their half of the profits from the free videos from the sponsoring studios. This should change as they move into selling through the kiosk in some applications rather than just providing information. Their plan is not to make their $ from the kiosks themselves as it will take 3 years to regain their costs under the current pricing structure. They are planning to deploy 400, not 100, over the next couple of months. The video store owners that i watched demo the product were impressed, they liked it a lot. I was very happy to hear that they are exploring these other areas and not just the video arena. Overall I felt that the company had good direction, and were presenting themselves well to their market. In my opinion there are things happening for this company, and while it will take a while for real earnings to show up they should be growing market presence at an accelerated rate. My basis here is under $3.5, and i now feel a lot better about holding my position than I did before. |
