To: Eric L who wrote (205 ) 9/12/1999 6:16:00 PM From: Mark Oliver Respond to of 332
So, if the card readers are standard, we should see some competition that will stimulate broad usage. Clearly, banks will want their customers to use the service as they will also enable their secure online banking. Best of all, a customer who can uuse the service will be a vary valuable client. Here's another subject that interests me. Maps. I find the idea of blending buying with finding is very useful. Mapquest seems to be pretty reasonable compared to other companies. They seem to have a very good franchise. Here's some info sent to me via e-mail. MAPQUEST BUSINESS TRACKING ABOVE EXPECTATIONS - We believe the company has quickly established itself as the standard for outsourced maps. We believe that page views for both its consumer and business segments are tracking ahead of schedule and there is potential upside to revenue in both segments. We expect the company to relaunch its consumer Web site, mapquest.com, within the next six weeks and believe several new features could lead to increased revenue and traffic. Included is a mapping feature that allows users to track vehicular traffic on major routes and actually view roadways live online. MapQuest also plans to implement a way for local businesses to purchase advertising on mapquest.com by simply visiting the site, formulating an advertising campaign, and paying with a credit card. We believe this direct sales local advertising initiative has the potential to drive upside to revenue by increasing sell-through, that is currently 30%. On the business-to-business front, we believe the company has already added 100 business customers this quarter with a month to go; our model calls for 120 total additions in the quarter. On the heels of the significant Federal Express win, this week MapQuest announced a deal with Sprint PCS to send maps and driving directions to PCS users. We believe contracts with sites such as Yahoo! are tracking well and believe the performance based structure of these deals could also provide upside to our revenue estimates for the second half of the year, which we have conservatively modeled as almost flat. Finally, we are for the first time seeing visibility into potential opportunities beyond mapping that can leverage MapQuest's proprietary databases. We can envision MapQuest becoming an "Internet Concierge," doing everything from providing maps and directions to selling travel related items and informing users which store locations have desired purchases in stock. We believe investors will begin to focus on the very large market MapQuest is pursuing from a leadership position, and we expect the stock to work much higher as the scope of opportunities becomes apparent. Eric, what do you think of Mapquest's potential in Europe? Will they be ahead or behind the us in adopting these types of mapping needs? Regards, Mark