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Gold/Mining/Energy : Microforum (MCF:TSE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MrsNose who wrote (3525)	1/14/2000 2:43:00 PM
From: Syl98	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3896

Stockformation Interview With the CEO of Microforum, Howard Pearl. Microforum in 2000 01/13/99 Stockformation.com had the pleasure of interviewing Howard Pearl who heads up one of Canada's most exciting companies, Microforum. The company has just released another set of astoundingly strong earnings and investors are excited by Microforum's move into the US market. Stockformation - What do you think the significance of your recent deal with evedent is? Howard - "Well it's significant to us from two perspectives: One, it signals that the banks and financial institutions have relaxed their concerns over Y2K and they are now adding to their software development again. Two, this is our third sale of significance of the CALMS product into an important financial institution in the US. I think that it categorically shows that the product has value and that it is gaining acceptance in an important sector and that we are capable of selling, servicing and completing transactions in that arena and underscores our commitment to move forward." Stockformation - What are you aiming at with CALMS, who are you looking to sell it to, and how widespread do you expect its use to be? Howard - "It's just one of several products that we have in our bag. We really are an end to end solutions provider. This is a product that really services well lease companies, banks and anyone who is in the small and mid cap lending environment in that it really does take 20% to 30% of the overhead away by removing the need for manual adjudication entirely. It also has the capability to transfer funds from one financial institution to another. So on the retail side for example, if you are selling or buying a piano for example you might have had to go to a small finance company at the weekend. No one will have to do that now. It can be done in minutes and more importantly it can be done 24 hours per day. Now on the B2B side, a small restaurateur might use it to secure funds to buy new equipment or any large ticket item. It's an interesting product that is gaining a great deal of acceptance. Here at home it is in use by Newcourt, National Bank etc. It has proven itself to be a very robust product." Stockformation - Well done on your excellent earnings. How do you intend to keep the earnings momentum going? Howard - "We are going to keep doing the same things. We are pointed in one direction: we have developed our Internet based business, it is our intention to continue to build, develop and focus on it. What we are seeing is that the convergence of technology and marketing strategy and strategic development is really coming together a lot faster than most people thought that it would. I believe that in the not too distant future, there will be no segmentation between marketing and technology firms. You will either have to own technology or have relationships with people that do that solve the problem of marketing issues. Take a look at the B2B site that we built for Ford Motor company . It rendered parts of their satellite communication system out of service (although they still use it). Ford dealers now communicate exclusively through an extraordinary extranet that has been built by us. They do not use fax machines anymore. All these are solutions that people will have to migrate to just in order to keep up and do business in the environment that we have today. I think that we are very well positioned, having the intellectual equity on both sides and products that are bulletproof. Look at the Christmas that we had, 3 of the top 100 digital sites in North America, according to Time Warner, are running on Microforum software. Petopia is actually in the top 25 and there were no problems, the software did what it was supposed to do - bulletproof. Chapters although not on that list, we put significant enhancements into it and it is a busy site. All of these experienced wonderfully smooth operations throughout a very busy season. So we will continue to take advantage of this convergence and continue to develop our staff, complete acquisitions and develop our business base in the US." Stockformation - How important is a US listing and your overall push toward the US with regard to increasing investor awareness? Howard - "I think that it is very important. We have one tenth of the investor base here so it's difficult to raise extraordinary amounts of capital and therefore it's challenging to get a market cap increased and its therefore difficult to use your shares as a vehicle through which you purchase and grow your business. Canada has been very good to us but the market for our solutions and our product is ten times the size outside Canada than it is here. Even still we have grown a huge Internet business as is evidenced by our last couple of quarters. So we will continue to develop this market as it is in the interests of our shareholders." Stockformation - Who do you see as your present and future competition? Howard -" The difference between competitors and comparatives is a very thin line.The interesting thing is that there continues to be more demand than there is supply in our industry at the moment. So , we come up against people like Razorfish and Cyberplex and so on and we certainly are holding our own. I think that the financial vertical between us is interesting. Forrester has explained that it is a $263 billion market opportunity. None of the companies that I have just mentioned have developed a financial product and that it something that separates us." Stockformation - What is your long term vision for Microforum, where do you see the company in 5 or 10 years? Howard - "I think that we need to continue to grow as a consolidation starts to happen in the industry and it will as it does in any industry. I would hope that we can move into a tier two position. We certainly have the ambition, the BHAG (Howard tells us that this is Harvard language for a big, hairy, audacious goal!) to sit with the tier one players but I don't think that we will ever become an AOL. We can certainly become a tier two player and sit up there with the IXL's and with the Razorfishs. It make take us a day or two longer but we will get there. That's where we are headed. We are building this company to last. Our fundamentals are very good.Look at our growth rate, it is where it should be. Our acquisition targets have been effective and we have been relatively well received by the markets here. We have a very liquid stock although we would like to see a bit more reward for the kind of performance that we are giving to the marketplace. But I am very pleased with how we have been received and we're just going to continue and hopefully people will get the message that we are not any different from The Razorfishs or the IXL's and maybe they will reward with that kind of a share price." If you wish to receive articles from Canadian analysts and investment journalists, please sign up for FREE MEMBERSHIP Stockformation.com wish to thank Howard Pearl for sharing his ideas with us as well as everyone else at Microforum for their help.