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Strategies & Market Trends : Three Amigos Stock Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: scouser who wrote (17584)	11/28/1999 10:50:00 AM
From: Ken W	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29382

John, Another knauk with an idea! Canada student e-commerce firm eyes stock listing By Susan Taylor OTTAWA, Nov 28 (Reuters) - To help stock the shelves of his online business for students, 26-year-old Alex de Bold is preparing ProfessorJones.com Inc. for listing on the new Canadian Venture Exchange. The fledgling Toronto-based firm, which sells services and post-secondary textbooks at a 15-40 percent discount to campus book stores, is hopeful that a listing can help fuel expansion. ``If you saw anything that relates to young entrepreneurs in Canada, it is that there's a total lack of risk capital,' said de Bold, a University of Ottawa graduate who thought up his Internet business as a class project. ``To get the type of value for what we're doing, we have to go public,' he said. More importantly, the listing is aimed at helping the firm expand its portal, the term for Web sites that offer a range of services and information to a target audience. ProfessorJones.com has struck an agreement for a reverse takeover of Royal Sovereign Exploration Inc. (Alberta:RSX.AL - news), a junior capital pool company listed on the Alberta Stock Exchange. (The Canadian Venture Exchange, which launches on Monday, is an amalgamation of the Alberta and Vancouver stock exchanges). Royal Sovereign shareholders are expected to vote on the transaction in January. If approved, ProfessorJones.com could be trading by early February, said Pat Powers, president of SteppingStone Capital Corp., an investor and financial advisor. ProfessorJones.com's U.S. counterparts have enjoyed significant market success. Boston, Massachusetts-based Student Advantage Inc. (NasdaqNM:STAD - news), which sells memberships for $20 per year, promotes about 40 national firms such as Tower Records, Amtrak and Egghead.com Inc. (NasdaqNM:EGGS - news). Shares priced at $8 for its June listing were trading at $15-1/4 on Friday. In the online textbook market, Lexington, Kentucky-based Ecampus.com raised $49 million in April during a first round of financing that included such savvy entrepreneurs as Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's. Despite the challenges of finding funding in Canada, de Bold has been fortunate. He got his start with more than C$1.5 million from SteppingStone in addition to angel investors led by John Kelly, the chief executive of Ottawa-based electronic forms business JetForm Corp. (Toronto:JFM.TO - news) After a year-long pilot to sell textbooks online, his launch of ProfessorJones.com in September saw more than 1.5 million hits in its first four days of operation. The portal offers services ranging from pay-per-play software games, using technology from Nortel Networks Corp. (Toronto:NT.TO - news)(NYSE:NT - news) spinoff Channelware Inc., to a virtual study group where students can compare notes online. The business is aimed at about 1.5 million Canadian university and college students who represent about C$500 million in annual spending. ``We're looking at integrating other ideas, other services, that other Canadian students are coming up,' said de Bold. ``It's a lot more attractive for these people to become part of a public company than a private company.' Deals are under way now to acquire a Vancouver, B.C.-based national youth magazine and another youth portal. Meanwhile, work is ongoing for the launch in January of an updated version of the site (http://www.professorjones.com) which will customize content for each Canadian campus. ProfessorJones.com counts three sources of revenue: electronic commerce (selling textbooks for example), advertising and services (such as fax-on-demand). Advertising to the 18- to 24-year-old demographic is now the biggest source of revenue, but de Bold suggests that will be outpaced by electronic commerce sales as more products are added to the portal. ``The attractiveness behind the college and university market -- and why the Molsons and the Labatts and the Cokes and the Pepsis are spending millions of dollars for exclusive pouring rights on campuses across the country -- is these people are trying to build a brand awareness and a loyalty to that brand,' said de Bold. ``We're positioning ourselves to be Canada's pre-eminent channel for marketing to students,' said de Bold. ($1=$1.47 Canadian) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Looks like the young man want to be the next AMZN of the college set. Ken