FATB's B2B Solutions Embraced at Over 300 Fortune 1000 Corps
Fatbrain.com Reports Results for the Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2000
Quarterly Online Sales Increase 193% to $10.3 million
Annual Online Sales Grow 170% to $28.8 million
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 8, 2000-- Fatbrain.com(TM), Inc. (Nasdaq: FATB - news), the leading online information exchange for business, today announced financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended January 31, 2000. The Company announced record online sales of $10.3 million for the fourth quarter, an increase of 193 percent from online sales of $3.5 million for the same quarter of the prior year. Total company sales, which also include sales generated by physical retail stores and trade shows, were $11.9 million for the quarter, a 122 percent increase over total sales of $5.3 million for the same period last year.
The Company reported a net loss for the fourth quarter of $10.0 million, or $0.79 per share. These results compare to a net loss of $3.4 million, or $0.37 per share, in the prior year period.
For the fiscal year, online sales totaled $28.8 million, an increase of 170 percent from online sales of $10.7 million for fiscal 1999. Total sales for the twelve month period were $35.3 million, an increase of 79 percent from total sales of $19.8 million for the prior fiscal year. The Company reported an annual net loss of $30.3 million, or $2.61 per share, compared to a net loss of $9.9 million, or $2.87 per share, for the same period of last year.
Fatbrain.com added more than 56,000 new customers during the fourth quarter, bringing the Company's total customer base to over 245,000. Online customer accounts increased 29.9 percent from the previous quarter, and repeat customer orders represented 60.4 percent of orders placed.
Business-to-Business Operating Highlights
Fatbrain.com Revolutionizes the Way Corporations Manage, Market and Distribute Content with Online Information Exchanges
Fatbrain.com's new Information Exchange solution combines the Company's e-commerce expertise, secure digital publishing technology, comprehensive professional bookstore, established print-on-demand infrastructure and world-class distribution and fulfillment to deliver a complete Web-based, one-stop outsourcing solution for mission-critical internal and external corporate information. Key elements of Fatbrain.com's document management solution include:
-- A one-stop, Web-based, end-to-end solution. Based on
Fatbrain.com's successful corporate online bookstore model,
corporations can catalog, track, publish and deliver their
internal and external publications via a custom
intranet-based or Internet Web site. In addition, the
Information Exchange can provide convenient access to
Fatbrain.com's world-class selection of books and resources
including Web-based training and certification programs.
-- Enterprise eMatter. Employing Fatbrain.com's secure digital
publishing technology, this efficient corporate application
for eMatter brings businesses one step closer to the
"paperless" office and allows not only the faster
distribution of information, but also reduced printing
expenses through the secure electronic distribution of
internal information.
-- Print-on-Demand. Fatbrain.com's print-on-demand solution
allows corporations to eliminate the costs associated with
setting up and maintaining an internal publishing and
distribution operation. The program oversees production,
warehousing and delivery of up-to-the-minute printed
documentation for employees, customers and partners.
Dennis Capovilla, Fatbrain.com's president and chief operating officer, commented, ``With our business-to-business solutions accounting for the lion's share of our revenues, we're expanding our focus on B2B to provide a comprehensive outsourcing solution. Information Exchanges allow corporations to streamline costs and improve service across all operations associated with document management, while freeing up valuable resources to focus on their core businesses. We believe that our new Information Exchange solutions will allow us to address a greater market opportunity and to augment our successful B2B expertise with higher margin generating services.'
Fatbrain.com's B2B Solutions Embraced at Over 300 Fortune 1000 Corporations
Fatbrain.com added over 450 corporate accounts during the fourth quarter and now reaches more than 300 of the corporations included in the Fortune 1000. Through its corporate business-to-business programs, Fatbrain.com's reach has grown to more than 2.25 million employee desktops worldwide.
During the quarter, the Company developed new corporate custom online bookstores for both new and existing customers, including a two-year agreement to host a bookstore exclusively for Informix (Nasdaq: IFMX - news) customer and developer communities and Fatbrain.com's fifth and sixth bookstores for Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT - news), serving the Microsoft Office and Microsoft Certified Solutions Provider user communities. In addition, Adobe Systems and Lawson Software signed on to take advantage of Fatbrain.com's Print-on-Demand solution for outsourcing the production and distribution of corporate publications to their respective customer communities. As part of the agreement, Fatbrain.com launched custom online bookstores accessible from links on Adobe and Lawson intranets and Lawson's customer support Web site that provide developers and employees with a quick and easy way to locate and buy hard copies of developer and software documentation.
New Partnership with E-Commerce Leader
Fatbrain.com continues to establish strategic partnerships with e-commerce industry leaders to offer its business-to-business outsourcing solutions to corporations of all sizes. The Company recently teamed up with Concur Technologies as part of its Business Advantage program, a global leveraged buying e-commerce trading network for the small and mid-size business (SMB) market that connects users over the Internet directly to market-leading suppliers, and enables small and mid-size businesses to take advantage of the leveraged buying power of multi-billion dollar corporations.
Fatbrain.com Expands Senior Management Team to Strengthen B2B Focus
In an effort to help drive the growth of its business-to-business e-commerce strategy, Fatbrain.com strengthened its senior management team during the fourth quarter with the appointment of Dennis Capovilla to the newly created position of president and chief operating officer, reporting to Chris MacAskill, who continues as chief executive officer. In his previous role as vice president of sales and business development, Capovilla was responsible for driving Fatbrain.com's sales, business development, customer service and product management strategies and was instrumental in forging key relationships with Fatbrain.com's major corporate customers and strategic partners.
Brad McBride replaces Capovilla as vice president, worldwide sales, and is responsible for driving the business-to-business strategy forward by managing and growing Fatbrain.com's customer base and working with key accounts to develop corporate solutions for outsourcing internal and external information resources through Fatbrain.com's Information Exchange program. Previously an 18-year veteran of Xerox, McBride was responsible for managing the operations performance of the company's Silicon Valley sales organization.
More than 7,000 eMatter Works Published
Fatbrain.com continues to make strides with its mass market eMatter digital publishing initiative. Known authors who recently submitted works via eMatter include Arthur C. Clarke, best-selling author of 2001: A Space Odyssey; Peter Norton, best selling author of ``Peter Norton's Inside the PC;' Edward Yourdon, renown expert and author of ``Case Studies in Object-Oriented Analysis and Design;' Jonathan Littman, author of ``The Watchman' about hacker Kevin Mitnick; Seth Godin, Internet business marketing guru and best selling author of ``Permission Marketing;' and Bob Nelson, best selling author of ``Management for Dummies.'
In addition, several new publishing firms have committed to providing content for purchase through the eMatter platform. New partners include IDG Consumer Cliff Notes, John Wiley & Sons, Crisp Publications Best Management Series, Ziff-Davis Journals, InfoCom, Ragan Communications, The Economic Press, Penton Media, Wintergreen Research and Warren Communications.
Chris MacAskill, chief executive officer, commented, ``While we have found an ideal fit for enterprise eMatter within our new Information Exchange product suite, we also believe that tremendous opportunities exist for eMatter within the mass market. We have several initiatives underway to strengthen our first mover advantage in the emerging marketplace for online digital publishing, and we plan to unveil new branding and financing strategies to capitalize on this mass market opportunity in the coming weeks.' |
