ROBERTSON STEPHENS
The Internet Stock Team
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October 8, 1999
The Web Report - Volume 2, Issue #40
Internetstocks.com Overview - Keith E. Benjamin -
mailto:keith@rsco.com
This week, the NETDEX index increased 10% to 620.37 compared with
the NASDAQ, which experienced a 4% increase.
While the NETDEX is up approximately 52% from its August lows, it
is still down about 22.6% from its all-time high of 801.41 on
April 13. If we look at percentage changes from low to high in
previous quarters (particularly last year's fourth quarter), the
NETDEX was up 67.5% in Q3:98, up 202.4% in Q4:98, up 66.0% in
Q1:99, up 69.6% in Q2:99 and up 47.1% in Q3:99.
REPORTING SEASON STARTS WITH A BIG BOOST FROM YAHOO! - Yahoo!'s
numbers were as impressive as ever, demonstrating the strength of
the advertising market, which has become harder as its absolute
size gets larger. Yahoo! was also upbeat about prospects for the
fourth quarter, which we expect will be helped by commerce.
While we can consider Yahoo! in a class by itself, we see many
other companies positioned to report strong quarters. We would
encourage investors to continue broadening exposure to the stock
group. While the stocks have started to recover, most are still
more than 35% below highs. We expect online shopping to garner
more attention this holiday season and are launching The Online
Shopping Challenge, described below, to get a closer view of the
activity.
Among the larger stocks, we continue to favor AOL, Amazon,
Excite@Home, and Priceline.com. Among the less than large
capitalization stocks, we see TicketMaster-CitySearch as a stand
out stock that has not moved much yet, but with strong prospects
for the quarter. Other favored stocks in this segment include
CMGI, Fatbrain, InfoSpace, Mapquest, NetPerceptions, Network
Solutions, Student Advantage, and XOOM.
EDITORIAL NOTE - I announced this week that I have decided to
leave Robertson Stephens to join Highland Capital Partners as a
general partner. Highland is a leading venture capital firm with
a focus on the Internet. I view this as more of a personal
transition than a departure. I still plan to be a contributing
editor for the weekly e-mail. In addition, Robertson Stephens and
Highland plan to explore a strategic marketing relationship to
further develop Internetstocks.com. After 16 years as a
sell-side analyst, I expected I would seek a transition away from
the service side and closer to the investment side of the
business. With venture, I hope to focus on finding and helping
create a few big winners over time, with less day-to-day market
stress. I am pleased to have been associated with a great team
to continue following the Internet stocks on a day-to-day basis.
Lauren Cooks Levitan has already established the leading
eTailing franchise. Eric Upin is perfectly positioned to ride
the huge business-to-business commerce wave. Mike Graham and
Lowell Singer have already been doing all the work with the
consumer content and advertising stocks. Lauren, Eric, Mike, and
Lowell represent just 4 of Robertson Stephens' 16 senior Internet
research analysts, who provide the deepest and broadest senior
research analyst coverage on the different Internet sectors,
including eFinance, eServices, eCommerce Services, eTailing,
eNetworking Software, eMarketing, eBusiness, eBusiness
infrastructure, B2B eCommerce, and ePayments.
eTail Update - Lauren Cooks Levitan - mailto:lauren@rsco.com
This week the eTailDEX continued its recovery, gaining 11.4% to
1368.67 versus 1228.88 last week (following an 11.35 gain in the
prior week). The eTailDEX is currently up 68.5% from the recent
low of 812.5 on August 4 but still now stands 24.3% below recent
highs. For comparison, the more broad-based NetDEX is 34.1%
above recent lows and only 22.6% below its 52-week high.
Leadership in the eTail group continues to be driven by the large
cap, franchise players (with Amazon up 26.3%, etoys up 25.9% and
Priceline up 27.4% over the last two weeks). Throughout the
earnings reporting season and as we get closer to the holiday
shopping season, we suspect the smaller cap stocks could begin to
catch up with the leading names. We continue to focus on Alloy
Online, beyond.com and Global Sports in the smaller
capitalization space as stocks with room for significant
appreciation.
JOIN OUR ONLINE SHOPPING CHALLENGE - You could win a $10,000
online shopping spree! We have frequently used this space to
lament the fact that we have limited tools to assess the quality
of online shopping experiences (short of doing a lot of our own
online shopping). While we believe personal experiences are a
decent means of determining an eTailer's standards and
capabilities in service, convenience, reliability, and price,
they provide a limited snapshot at best. We place a great deal
of importance on the execution capabilities of individual
eTailers and expect Q4 will bring a wide range of outcomes with
some players much better able to handle the seasonal demands than
others. Rather than wait to learn about which sites are faring
better than others, we have decided to do something about the
data vacuum that exists. We are launching The Online Shopping
Challenge, powered by BizRate.
The Online Shopping Challenge is our attempt to aggregate
sufficient anecdotal data on eTailers to help us make more
informed investment decisions. The event, which begins next week
and runs through December 25, invites online shoppers to visit
www.internetstocks.com and complete a survey after they have
completed an online shopping experience with any eTailer. As an
incentive to increase participation, each survey respondent will
be entered to win (or donate) a $10,000 online shopping spree.
In addition, we will make a $10,000 donation to Adopt-A-Family.
We will analyze the results and report on them in this space on a
regular basis throughout the holiday season. If you're planning
to shop online this holiday season, we would love for you to take
a few minutes to fill out a survey following each shopping
experience. And tell your friends - the more data we get the
more useful it should prove to be for all of us! Bizrate.com, an
independent third party research company, continuously surveys
millions of online buyers and is the only company trusted by more
than 1,700 online merchants to continuously collect direct
customer feedback and transactional information at the
point-of-purchase. We are very excited to have BizRate powering
this event for us. "Happ eShopping!"
THE NEXT WAVE OF ETAILING - Our firm held its annual Consumer
Conference in New York this week. Not surprisingly, eTailers
commanded a disproportionate presence relative to the young
channel's dollar impact on the nearly $3 trillion retail market.
A wide range of eTailers, both public and private, made
presentations. We came away from the event with the impression
that business trends across the sector remained robust during Q3
setting up a positive earnings season. That positive momentum
also has most eTailers ramping up their advertising and back-end
capabilities in an effort to capitalize on what is expected to be
a dramatic increase in consumer demand for online shopping over
the coming weeks.
We are very encouraged by the most recent wave of eTailers, many
of whom have increasingly attractive business models. This
week's presentations showed that we are rapidly moving beyond the
initial eTailer superstore format, which often brought multiple
players selling commodities, stiff price competition and low
gross margins. While many of the next wave of eTailers are
addressing seemingly smaller markets, we believe several also
have greater potential to achieve higher gross margins. We
believe this is critical since we continue to believe using gross
margin dollars is a more appropriate means of valuing eTailers
before they reach profitability.
Themes of the "Next Wave" that we were encouraged by include
consumable businesses (pets.com, more.com), high margin product
categories (internetdiamonds.com, Miadora.com) and value-added
retailers (BravoGifts.com) that can justify their acquisition
costs; whole new buying formats exclusively achievable online
(Mercata); categories with limited distribution where access to
key suppliers can differentiate a competitor (800.com);
interesting strategic alliances bridging the online and offline
worlds (Della & James, Wine.com); creative use of technology and
integration with media to drive sales (gloss.com and boo.com);
companies enabling and accelerating the adoption of online
commerce (BizRate); and land-based brands intelligently
addressing the online opportunity (Dean & Deluca).
PREVIEW TRAVEL MERGER WITH TRAVELOCITY ESTABLISHES TRAVEL LEADER
- We believe this week's announced merger between Preview Travel
and Travelocity.com (a division of SABRE Holdings) highlights the
importance of having a balanced combination of superior reach,
content, technology, and management to succeed online. While we
have been skeptical of some eTailing mergers, often viewing them
as acts of competitive desperation, we believe this proposed
merger, in a category we have long believed held great
opportunity, establishes both the scale and the complementary
skill set required to win the category.
Preview Travel had historically been successful at driving
traffic, which in turn drove an increasingly attractive base of
advertising revenues. Yet, it had been less able to demonstrate
rapid acceleration in revenues from selling airline tickets and
other travel offerings (we estimate a "look to book" ratio for
most travel eTailers of less than 10%). So how will the combined
company address this situation? First, size clearly does
matter, in our view. In the month of July, we estimate the new
combined company's unduplicated reach as measured by MediaMetrix
would have been 7.9%, which would have made it the third highest
ranking shopping site behind Amazon and eBay. We believe this
impressive Web presence should allow the new company to more
effectively utilize Preview's superior travel content for driving
ad sales. On the transaction revenue side, while Preview and
Travelocity have similar sized registered user bases (9MM and
8.7MM, respectively), Travelocity generated approximately twice
as many gross bookings so far in 1999. We believe Travelocity's
ability to convert shoppers to buyers at a greater rate is driven
by a more convenient shopping interface and superior technology
facilitated through its connection to SABRE's reservation system.
We look forward to higher conversion rates across the company's
combined user base. We also expect the new company could be
better positioned to negotiate more favorable supplier
relationships with the airlines, given their formidable industry
presence (combined they are one of the top 10 travel agencies in
the country), which should drive profitability improvements.
Given our belief that this highly complementary skill set
positions the new travelocity.com as the definitive leader in the
online travel market, we upgraded our rating on Preview Travel's
shares to Buy.
ALLOY ONLINE'S GEN Y CONNECTION ATTRACTS RETAILER PARTNERS - This
week Alloy Online announced the formation of an innovative
seasonal commerce partnership program for preferred merchants. In
exchange for a monthly fee, Alloy will host customized stores for
its merchant partners on its site. Initial launch partners
include some of the most recognizable and relevant brands among
teens such as Pacific Sunwear, Nike, Eastpak, Fossil, Guess, and
mymusicfactory.com. We believe this announcement validates our
thesis that Alloy, given its growing and deep relationships with
teens, is uniquely positioned to partner with other retailers,
manufacturers, and marketers interested in reaching the Gen Y
customer segment. Further, we believe the quality of brands
choosing to launch with this initiative and open stores on
Alloy's site provides evidence that Alloy is evolving into the
leading Gen Y portal. While we do not expect Alloy to generate
significant revenues from this program, given it is in an early
stage of development, going forward we believe these kinds of
agreements could represent an enormous opportunity for
incremental revenue. As participating merchants, many of whom
have ignored and/or struggled to tap the Gen Y market, realize
Alloy's strong relationship with Gen Y users provides an ideal
connection into this consumer segment, we envision Alloy
expanding this initiative.
GLOBAL SPORTS - TEAMING UP WITH YAHOO! - Global Sports announced
this week that it will be the exclusive eTailer of the Sports and
Recreation section for Yahoo!'s Shopping service. The
far-reaching agreement is for 15 months, gives Global Sports'
eTail partners exclusive rights to the anchor tenancies and
merchandise slots available within the Sports and Recreation
space, and makes Global's partners the exclusive sporting goods
affiliates to Geocities. Additionally, every single page of
Yahoo! sports content will provide text links to Global's retail
partners through the Sports and Recreation area, and the partner
sites will be prominently promoted in numerous sports-related
areas of the Yahoo! network. We believe Yahoo!'s deep
partnership with Global Sports is yet another important
endorsement of Global Sports' unique business model, coming on
the heels of Global's announced agreement to provide sporting
goods eTailing with WebMD, through thesportsauthority.com, last
week. We expect the traffic that could be driven to Global
Sports' various retail partner sites by the broad exposure
offered through Yahoo! enhances its opportunity to establish
leadership within the online sporting goods market, and we
anxiously await the launch of the company's partner sites later
this month.
WAL-MART DELAYS REVAMPED SITE LAUNCH - Wal-Mart announced that
its much-anticipated site relaunch will not take place in time
for the 1999 holiday season. While the company indicated it
would expand its current online product offerings before the
holidays, a more complete line, which should eventually include
more than 600,000 SKUs, and the much hyped and promised improved
site, will not be available until next year. Many in the media
and the investment community have assumed that Wal-Mart's
dominant land-based presence, strong ties with manufacturers, and
massive customer base would translate quickly into rapid success
online once the company relaunched its site, creating a dismal
scenario for eTailers. We have never embraced this theory given
our thesis that having store customers does not automatically
mean customers will extend their relationship with you online.
In the physical world, location is critical; in the online
retailing world, data is critical. And while Wal-Mart reportedly
has 90-100 million retail customers per week, it knows how to
reach very few of those people online. By not stepping up its
efforts more quickly, Wal-Mart is, in effect, creating more
opportunities for other eTailers to build a customer base, and
with it, the data critical to interacting with customers going
forward. While we appreciate its desire not to rush their site
relaunch (especially given the high expectations that have been
set), we believe this delay clearly makes the comparison of
Amazon and Wal-Mart even less relevant than it has been to date.
We continue to expect that Wal-Mart will have a solid
incremental business on line; we just don't believe it will have
to be at the expense of Amazon, which we project could have at
least 13 million customers by the end of 1999.
eNetwork Update - Michael Graham - mailto:michael@rsco.com
YAHOO! SETS THE STOCK STANDARD - Yahoo! reported 3Q:99 revenues
up 20.6% sequentially to $155.1 million, above our estimate of
$135.0 million, and EPS of $0.14, above our estimate of $0.09 per
share. Traffic increased 24% to an average of more than 385
million page views per day in September compared to an average of
310 million in June. Yahoo! now has more than 80 million unique
registered users, up 23% from 65 million at the end of June.
Looking toward next year, we expect we will continue to see
increasing advertising rates, which could even be closer to
double digits than single digits on a percentage basis. For the
next quarter, we remain highly confident about Yahoo's rapid
growth rate. We believe the company may finally have fixed its
commerce strategy, enabling it to capture more holiday shopping
dollars at its new shopping mall. We believe Yahoo!'s commerce
efforts may allow it to finally catch up with AOL's existing mall
and Amazon's emerging mall with zShops. On the international
front, we believe the numbers are adding up quickly as there are
now 21 world properties in Yahoo's global network with more than
105 million unique users as of September. In our view, Yahoo! is
positioned to capture a disproportionate share of the Web's
upside with less controversy than almost any other stock in the
group.
GEMSTAR ACQUIRES TV GUIDE - Gemstar announced plans to buy TV
Guide (TVGIA-$47). Although we believe the acquisition came as a
surprise to a number of investors, we like the deal. We believe
the combination takes much of the execution risk out of the
Gemstar's stock while forgoing only a marginal bit of short-term
upside. We believe the merger should lead to quicker penetration
of the Gemstar's EPG across all platforms, as the deal aligns
Gemstar's strength in the consumer electronics market with TV
Guide's strength in the cable set-top market. As Gemstar's EPG
gains critical mass, we believe the future advertising revenue
stream will accelerate substantially, with the combined entity
leveraging TV Guide's large sales force and well known brand.
Also this week, Gemstar was awarded a penalty of $26 million to
$35 million in a partial arbitration ruling against General
Instrument for past unpaid licensing fees. In the future, we
expect Gemstar will receive ongoing fees related to additional
GIC set top box sales. This award relates to GIC's illegal use of
Gemstar's EPG in analog boxes. The second phase of arbitration
will focus on digital boxes and is expected to begin in the next
three months. We believe this week's news removes two of the
largest concerns from Gemstar's stock and helps to clear the path
for open-ended growth. We believe Gemstar's EPG business can
rapidly grow to an installed base of 30 million households within
a couple years. We believe this would be worth approximately $50
billion in market capitalization, providing upside to Gemstar
stock.
AOL LAUNCHES ITS NEW 5.0 VERSION - AOL formally launched its new
5.0 version with enhanced features such as "You've Got Pictures,"
"My Calendar", and AOL Plus, which detects the user's bandwidth
and capability for multimedia content, adjusting the user
experience accordingly. We believe the rollout of AOL 5.0 and
related promotional events could help the stock from a perception
standpoint, as did AOL 4.0. In our view, AOL is focused on
making the "connected experience" even more central in users
lives. In doing so, we believe users will spend more time online
and view more pages, which translates into increased revenues. We
understand that there are currently more than two million
downloads of AOL 5.0 with limited promotion. We believe this can
help counter concerns of price-based competition.
eSOURCERS INFOSPACE & MAPQUEST WORK TOGETHER - MapQuest and
InfoSpace announced a strategic alliance whereby MapQuest will
become the exclusive provider of mapping and driving directions
throughout the InfoSpace network, which now reaches more than
86% of the Web. We believe the agreement bodes well for both
sides as it significantly extends MapQuest's reach and expands
the breadth of quality products offered by InfoSpace. On a
separate note, we believe the increased traffic numbers that we
have witnessed from both Media Metrix and Yahoo! serve as a
positive for eSourcers, which benefit from increased page views
and strong volumes. These data points continue to strengthen our
belief that both companies are poised to deliver exceptional Q3
results with upside to our estimates.
ASK JEEVES KEEPS SERVING INVESTORS - One of the less noticed
stocks recently is AskJeeves, which in our opinion, is the first
intuitive answering network on the Web. The company continues to
add new corporate customer accounts, this week announcing IDG
Books Worldwide. Other customers include Compaq, Dell, E*TRADE,
Iomega, Micron Electronics, Oxygen.com and Toshiba Corporation.
Additionally this week, Ask Jeeves announced a strategic
partnership with Evergreen Project, Inc. which responds to the
demand for interactive learning programs, by bringing innovative
Web-based educational programming to the classroom. We believe
there could be modest upside to our Q3 estimates based on the
pace of new account additions, and believe an exceptional quarter
could be a catalyst for the stock. We believe investors have yet
to fully grasp the large B2B opportunity of outsourcing customer
service and search functions that AskJeeves fulfills.
eMarketing Update - Lowell J. Singer - mailto:lowell@rsco.com
eMARKETING INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES: In our view, Yahoo's
earnings announcement set a very positive tone for the Internet
group in general and for the eMarketing stocks specifically.
When DoubleClick announces earnings on October 14, we expect
upside to our revenue estimates driven by both DART and network
sales. We believe that the stock can continue to move higher,
particularly if the company announces the addition of any
significant new customers.
XOOM - We believe that Xoom.com and Net Perceptions also present
attractive investment opportunities heading into earnings season.
We believe that investors have only recently begun to refocus on
Xoom after staying on the sidelines for several months. We
expect that Xoom.com will deliver upside to our Q3 revenue
estimates driven by strong membership growth. We expect the
stock to react favorably to the earnings announcement and to the
closing of the Xoom/Snap/NBC Internet merger that could happen by
the end of October.
NETPERCEPTIONS - We expect that Net Perceptions' stock could get
a boost from both a solid quarter and the company's recent new
product announcements. Following last week's introduction of Net
Perceptions for Marketing Campaigns, the company this week
introduced Net Perceptions for Knowledge Management. This
product will allow companies to incorporate personalization
software on corporate Intranet sites to better connect employees
with a company's vast intellectual and written resources. We
expect that the product's attractiveness to Fortune 1000
companies could help expand Net Perceptions' existing customer
base and drive upside to our long-term revenue estimates.
eBusiness Update - Eric Upin - mailto:eric@rsco.com
Last week we formerly launched the Business-to-Business (B2B)
eCommerce coverage area. We believe that B2B companies represent
the next major stage of Internet growth and stock
appreciation-substantially eclipsing Business-to-Consumer (B2C)
commerce volumes by several orders of magnitude. The combined
market cap of the B2C space totals approximately $500 billion.
Our three Buy-rated names in the space are Chemdex (CMDX),
Internet Capital Group (ICGE), and VerticalNet (VERT).
Chemdex: Although it is still very early, we believe the Chemdex
model could prove to be one of the more effective approaches for
quickly building critical mass. Chemdex aggregates suppliers from
traditional distribution channels-moving them online to a single
place in a standard catalog format. In the life sciences market,
Chemdex has grown its network to more than 150 suppliers and
nearly a million products. With this offering, the company is
quickly ramping its customer base and transaction revenues.
Internet Capital Group: We consider ICG to be a core B2B holding
as the company represents a diversified play on both commerce and
infrastructure. ICG has funded a broad portfolio of B2B
companies, but distinguishes its model from traditional venture
capitalists given its long-term investment strategy and role as
an incubator. ICG is committed to developing each of its partner
companies into the leading player in its respective market. As
the hub of an interconnected partner network, ICG provides
valuable resources in the areas of recruiting, partnering,
marketing, and operations. Moreover, ICG is building its
infrastructure capabilities in order to provide its companies
with a strong technology platform-resulting in accelerated growth
and competitive advantage in a world where time-to-market is
critical.
VerticalNet: We believe VerticalNet also represents a
diversified play on B2B eCommerce given the company's portfolio
of 47 vertical sites. While the company's media model has
generated sizable advertising revenues from its targeted markets,
we believe VerticalNet's early lead in building content and
communities, more importantly, will drive commerce-resulting in a
sustainable, transaction-based revenue model moving forward. In
our opinion, VerticalNet is laying the foundation to become a
long-term winner in the space.
eBrokers - Weekly Stock Volume Report - Scott Appleby -
mailto:scott@rsco.com
Volumes Update - Volumes are continuing to show signs of
recovery from the summer slowdown. Average daily volume for the
NetDex increased 7% this September 29-October 5 week to 184.4
million shares traded from last week's average of 173.0 million.
Total volume for the week came in at 922.1 million, up from
864.8 million shares the previous week. The TechDex remained
relatively steady compared to last week's quarterly high, with
total trading volume of 1.64 billion shares.
These increased volumes are a good sign for our eBrokers, and
this is beginning to be reflected in their stock prices. The
eBrokerDex was up this week to 114 from last week's Index of 111.
While we are still far from the beginning of the quarter's Index
of 182, we believe, as trading volumes in high-tech securities
continue to rise, so will the eBrokerDex.
Another metric that we will begin tracking in our weekly reports
is AutEx volume numbers, which measures the advertised trade
volume of the leading market makers. This week,
Knight/Trimark's advertised trade volume was 845 million shares,
down 2% from last week's volume of 861 million shares. For the
third quarter, NITE's Nasdaq trade volume was 11.88 billion,
16,5% lower than the second quarter. This decline was expected,
given the overall slowdown in trading volume in the third
quarter. While NITE's Nasdaq volumes have declined this quarter,
the company still maintains the top ranked position of all market
makers in the Nasdaq market.
Knight/Trimark Update - The seasonal lull in volume and
volatility that occurred over this past quarter have affected
NITE worse than we had expected. We therefore lowered our
revenue and earnings estimates for the company for 1999 and 2000.
Revenue estimates were lowered from $178 million to $142
million for the third quarter, and from $219 million to $171
million for 4Q99. FY00E revenues were also lowered from $1.0
billion to $859 million. Although NITE has been hurt by dull
market conditions, we still believe in the long-term fundamentals
of the company that make NITE the leading market maker.
EBrokers Update - This week, American Express announced plans to
build an online brokerage service complete with financial
advisory and cash management services. The company plans to
offer low trading fees ($14.95/trade), which will be waived for
accounts over $100,000. Customers with at least $25,000 in their
accounts will receive free buy orders. American Express believes
they can offer minimal trading fees because the company plans to
make money by utilizing its 9,300 advisors to offer customers
fee-based financial advice. The new service is planned to launch
later this fall. American Express plans to focus its efforts
only at cross selling its existing card member base and does not
intend to fight the marketing wars with the eBrokerage veterans.
The company launched an online product in 1996 only to lose an
estimated $40 million, gaining less than 10,000 accounts.
Therefore, we do not see it as a present threat to any
incumbents.
ETRADE UPDATE - E*Trade also announced significant developments
this week. The company announced the launch of its Japanese
financial services Web site, E*Trade Japan. This site will offer
trading of Japanese securities and mutual funds as well as
comprehensive company reports to E*Trade Japan customers. The
new web site already has an established customer base through the
acquisition of Osawa securities, a Japanese brokerage firm. The
launch of E*Trade Japan represents a significant opportunity for
E*Trade as Japan's Internet market is the second largest in the
world with more than 18 million users, according to Nikkei
NetBusiness. With the launch of the sixth E*Trade branded site
launched outside of the U.S., E*Trade is securing its position as
a global leader in online brokerage.
INTUIT UPDATE - Intuit announced a proposal to acquire Rock
Financial, a leading provider of online mortgages for $370
million in stock. In order to better satisfy its customers,
Intuit plans to move from a referral-based model to a direct
model, allowing customers to close loans through their site.
This move should impact revenues favorably by increasing revenue
per closed loan and providing greater loan volume to the
company's financial institution partners. With the acquisition
of Rock Financial, Intuit will develop an end-to-end mortgage
service where customers can search for a loan, fill out an online
application, and work with experienced loan representatives.
Intuit plans to issue 12 million shares of stock in order to
acquire Rock and its sister company, Title Source, Inc. This
will have a dilutive effect of approximately $0.03 per share for
the year. However, the company believes efficiencies in its
other businesses will compensate for the additional expenses in
the third and fourth quarters of FY00. We view the acquisition
of Rock as another positive step for Intuit to more aggressively
pursue its Internet strategy. We expect other strategic
acquisitions will follow in the company's quest to become a
leading Super Financial Portal.
Intuit also recently announced further enhancements to its
Quicken.com Web site. Through an alliance with
ClickTheButton.com, Intuit will launch its new shopping service,
providing customers with ClickTheBotton's free price comparison
software under the brand name Quicken Shopper. Intuit also
announced an alliance with WebEx, a provider of virtual office
services, to offer Quicken.com users the ability to conduct
Web-based conferences. Individuals and small businesses can use
this service to hold real-time meetings in which participants can
view documents and presentations, run software, and use the Web
at their desks. We believe these new services will further
Quicken.com's position as a leadi |
