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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony @ Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony, -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Anthony@Pacific who wrote (70839)	5/1/2001 9:25:33 AM
From: Ray Rueb	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 122087

Tony: Again I say you are using flawed logic Per you suggestion I am announcing at the start of this response that: I am a HOMS employee, but this posting represents my personal views and not those of my employer. Furthermore, my personal views are not combined with insider information in this posting. Point one: in message #70844 you state: Point is HOMS divides their revenues from two sources Agents subscribers 65% & Advertising revenues.. down to 35% The problem here is that you are confusing a revenue source with a product. You cannot take a reported number (x) for a revenue source and divide by the number of subscribers (y) and say then every subscriber must be paying $(x)/(y) for one product. Doesn't HOMS have a whole line of products? The iLead Silver (at $349) and Platinum (at $649) seem to be ENTRY POINTS for a CUSTOMER BASE. I would imagine these customers are later upsold into OTHER PRODUCTS like Virtual Tours. Why doesn't your math include revenue from Virtual Tours and other premium products? When I search for listings on the site, I get lots that have Virtual Tours. And isn't every one of those tours $100+? AND HOMS seems to have other products that "Ralph" the customer care specialist didn't include his descriptions of the Silver and Platinum packages. Where are those in your Math? Point 2: in the same message #70844 you state: If you take out the Cendant subscribers HOMS lost subscribers Now I accuse you of faulty math and faulty logic; but in your defense, maybe you just blew the subtraction. In posting #70845 (Jay Fisk) posted: HOMS also saw its number of subscribers increase from 184,000 to 359,000 in the first quarter of this year, a very impressive increase of 175,000. However, a staggering 166,000, or 95% of those, were direct adds by Cendant. If the above statement is correct and you remove the INCREASE due to Cendant from the above numbers, that still leaves 5% growth due to non-Cendant sources. 5% NET growth in ONE QUARTER. Given this, how can you possibly support your position that the subscriber base is shrinking? Point 3: Your 26 minute call to "Ralph" the customer care specialist. Ralph clearly said he couldn't tell you about revenue numbers AND REFERRED you to the corporate headquarters in California. He even gave you the phone number. This is not HOMS refusing to answer you, a customer care specialist just wasn't qualified or informed enough to answer your corporate level type of question. Try calling or emailing the Investor Relations person, I'm sure she'll have the answers you seek. Also you really don't need to disguise yourself, no one is hiding anything from you. As a matter of speculation on my part, if you were to let the IR person know how important you are, maybe she'd invite you up for a full briefing like a real analyst. Or you could come to the annual shareholders meeting and ask a direct question to the CEO. I'd like to see you go head to head with Stuart Wolff; given the math abilities you've shown here, he'd eat you alive. Also, Ralph listed at least 12 benefits to and features of the iLead website product. How can you say it is just email and a photo? The real estate business is about lead generation, and he was trying to tell you the benefits in that area, but clearly you weren't listening. Also: Kudos to Ralph!!! He was polite and patient with you given how obnoxious and moronic you were acting. Also, since he seemed to indicate that he was commission based, it was really nice that he was suggesting the Silver product as a trial for you (based on your needs) and not pushing you towards Platinum. Point 4: In several messages, you and other people keep saying something like "2000 employees, what do they all do?". I say that this is the REAL question you need to be answering. Once you know how many people are involved with supporting the existing business vs. how many are dealing with future business, THEN you begin to understand where a company is going. Please don't bother Ralph with your quest to figure this out, he clearly stated he didn't even know how many employees HOMS had, and certainly wouldn't know what they did; besides, he's probably busy supporting HOMS's real customers. Also, where is your math here? $100 million in revenue per quarter divided by 2000 employees... is that a good ratio for this type of company at its current growth rate? As you and others are so fond of saying on the ZIXI thread... subscribers and revenues is what its all about. HOMS has both. You all be careful out there Ray