RE: Profitability
by: silver_surfer_88 (M/the megaverse) 5/18/00 8:36 pm
Msg: 6778 of 7566
Walker now predicting profitability in Q4 '01.
We think this is probably coincidental to the presentation being made to investors at JPM as well as upcoming tour. While it's no surprise to any of us who have been watching this company grow responsibly by leaps and bounds, it always helps to let the new investors know.
Of course this raises the expectations bar which, as we saw with the last quarterly announcement, can be dangerous.
What we think is very unpredictable at this point, even by Walker and company insiders, is what B2Bnow is going to throw off in terms of revenues. They know the cost side, and have been funding the cost side since January, and can probably ballpark the ad revenue, but the transactions revenue is up for grabs.
The outsized revenue growth to date has been driven by the existing revenue streams of:
1. Shopnow.com (#1 shopping mall on the net for the first four months of 2000)
2. bottomdollar (6 million product searches per month)
3. Speedyclick (33rd largest site on the net.
11 million unique visits per month. 15,000 new members PER DAY.)
4. eBusiness services (offering planning, strategic, development, processing, warehousing, hosting, maintenance, marketing, etc.)
The NEW revenue streams coming online:
5. uBarter.com (cash fee per barter transaction)
6. FreeMerchant (Already has 65,000 merchants and adding 5,000 new per month)
7. B2Bnow.com (600,000+ businesses already listed. Ad revenue, placement, and most of all, transaction fees - very high GM).
The last estimate we saw predicted $15 million in B2B portal and transactions revenue alone for '00, rising to $45 million in '01. This analysis preceded the FreeMerchant acquisition which will contribute fully going forward.
We think these revenue estimates are conservative, and will be easily bested. We think that profitability will be even sooner than Walker publicly predicted, but don't tell anybody.
Of course it's POSSIBLE that B2Bnow will fall on its face, but with 600,000+ businesses and trading platforms and placement and ad revs, we think that's HIGHLY unlikely.
Walker came from running a MUCH larger business. In the end Network Commerce is going to be an 800 pound gorilla in its space. You can tell people that.
The existing lines of business are already growing like mad, does anyone have a quarrel there? The losses are going down, the cash to stay alive is there, and I have a feeling some big alliances are also in the offing.
But what do I know, I jumped out of a comic book. You're probably better off in muni-bonds on second thought.
SILVER_SURFER
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OH YEAH
by: silver_surfer_88 (M/the megaverse) 5/18/00 10:28 pm
Msg: 6785 of 7566
I forgot to remind myself that the number of merchants grew from 48,000 to 61,000 Q to Q.
AND revenue per merchant grew from $34,991 to $47,504.
Here's an excerpt from an article I saw around:
<<<When comparison shopping first hit the Net a couple of years ago, portals were expected to help turn it into the next big thing. Excite, Yahoo and Lycos (LCOS) , among others, were planning to unleash their newly purchased shopping bots that would let users compare prices and other features on given items across a range of online retailing sites. But the portals' comparison-shopping services soon gave way to a wave of affinity-marketing agreements in which retailers paid premiums for placement. The portals buried their bots.
But a handful of independent sites have given new life to comparison shopping. Four in particular ? BizRate.com, ShopNow.com (SPNW) , MySimon.com and DealTime.com ? have seen their traffic rise steadily since the holiday season. Two-year-old MySimon, purchased earlier this year by CNET (CNET) , attracted more than 1 million visitors in March, up from 340,000 in October, according to Media Metrix (MMXI) . ShopNow Networks, a public company in which 24/7 Media (TFSM) holds a 19 percent stake, drew nearly 3 million unique visitors in March, up from 1.2 million in October. DealTime, backed by America Online and Time Warner, also hosted some 2.5 million visitors in March, up from 522,000 in October. Leading the group is BizRate, which attracted over 4 million unique visitors in March, doubling its October numbers. BizRate is now more popular than any portal's shopping channel, except for AOL's ? a significant fact, given that portals generate about 20 percent of retail e-commerce revenue, according to Jupiter Communications (JPTR) . That means BizRate has emerged as a force in e-commerce.<<<
In honor of lefty.
S_S |
