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Technology Stocks : CheckFree (CKFR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kurt Peterson who wrote (673)	10/23/1997 6:07:00 PM
From: Brooks Jackson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8545

A very upbeat conference call today. Kight saying "the future is enormously bright" if CKFR keeps executing. Some points I found interesting: --Kight implied strongly that CKFR has already contracted with additional merchants for e-bill, beyond the 20 already announced. --The $900,000 operating loss from the electronic commerce division is "well ahead of expectations." --CKFR has 882 merchants connected electronically for e-pay, up from 855 last quarter. Also, 47% of the transactions at the Columbus processing center are now all-electronic, and 12% of those at the former Intuit center in Chicago (up from 2% Jan. 1) --Kight expects more top-50 banks to come on. He sees the bulk of CKFR's electronic processing business with big banks for the forseeable future. He said he could not predict when smaller banks would supply a "recogizable percentage" of CKFR's revenue. --Wells Fargo and Nationsbank are both promoting their electronic banking products again. This should bring in more customers for e-pay. E-pay customers grew to "more than 2 million" from 1.8 million in the quarter. The target is still 2.8 million by the end of the fiscal year. --However, don't expect any profits from e-BILL for at least 18 months. "This is a zero-billion-dollar industry for another year-and-a-half." --One analyst asked about an announcement by First Data that it had missed numbers due to increased spending on MSFDC e-bill. Kight said he couldn't understand that, because "other than putting some sales people on the street, they haven't begun to spend" on creation of a product. "We're way out ahead," he said, adding that "the real bleeding" comes when the first million transactions are processed. --The new Genesis platform will operate with "ruthless efficiency" and will bring cost savings starting in fiscal 1999 (a year or so from now). One analyst asked why it could only handle one-third of U.S. households; the answer was that the building has enough space, air conditioning and so forth to handle rapid expansion if needed. It is "a very skeletal platform ... we can grow fast." --Regarding e-bill, Kight said the key factor to watch is how fast CKFR can sign e-bill agreements with the nearly 900 merchants who are already hooked up electronically for e-pay. "That's what you should be watching." I had to ring off midway through. If others listened to the entire presentation and heard other points of interest, please share.