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Strategies & Market Trends : e-Commerce the Next 100 Months...... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TLindt who wrote (147)	3/17/1998 5:14:00 PM
From: MarcG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2882

I'd expect to see alot of red on a day the comp's down 9, weak tech day, blue chip rally. I started a new little portfolio today comprised of 3 stocks and called it the FSTC Electronic Check Portfolio. Not bad for its first day out batting .1000, 3 out of 3. techstocks.com Cheers, MarcG

To: TLindt who wrote (147)	3/17/1998 10:38:00 PM
From: cm	Respond to of 2882

Excellent Fortune Article on VRSN... March 30, 1998 Are You Really You? VeriSign's digital certificates could help prove your identity on the Internet. Eryn Brown When VeriSign, a Mountain View, Calif., software company that issues a type of Internet ID, went public on Jan. 30, its shares began trading at $14 and closed at $25.50, up a hefty 82%. To jaded market watchers, it looked like another overhyped Internet IPO, bound to sink as investors realized there was little to the stock besides buzz. After all, VeriSign's 1997 revenues were just $9.4 million; its losses, $19.2 million. Like Netscape--the original red-hot but profit-challenged Internet IPO--VeriSign owed its appeal to its prominence on the Web. A Wall Street writer derided it as a "cybermirage." But VeriSign deserves more respect. Its bread-and-butter product, the digital certificate, is made up of little pieces of crack-resistant computer code that assure parties on either side of an Internet conversation that they're communicating with the right person. Because these IDs offer dealmakers on the Net a way to identify trading partners online, many believe they will help propel electronic commerce into the big time. Digital certificates haven't caught on in a major way yet, but they have momentum. Based on decades-old encryption technology, they're recognized worldwide and even serve as legally binding signatures in Washington, Utah, and other states. People treat widespread adoption of the certificates as if it were a done deal. Says Steve Crocker, an Internet pioneer who is chief technology officer at CyberCash, an electronic- payments company: "It's a question of when, not whether, it will happen." VeriSign's prospects may be more solid than those of many other Internet startups because its success does not hinge on the whims of Web users; VeriSign plans to become profitable by selling to businesses. For example, your company might use VeriSign IDs to authorize employee access to your corporate network. Or a bank might issue VeriSign IDs to customers who want to do transactions online. "Certificates are going to wind up being given to us much more often than we're going to go out and get them," says Jerry Michalski, managing editor of Release 1.0, an influential computer industry newsletter. VeriSign trails rivals in selling to the corporate market. GTE CyberTrust has been in the business for some 15 years, and Nortel spinoff Entrust Technologies, which has been selling digital-certificate software to corporations since 1994, has three times VeriSign's revenues. But the market is still young (only $200 million last year, according to one estimate), and VeriSign spent 1997 beefing up its enterprise pitch. The company recently announced deals with corporate heavy hitters NationsBank, Hewlett-Packard, and Visa (which holds a minority stake); VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos says enterprise contracts now represent nearly 80% of revenues. His goal is to make VeriSign a giant of digital certificates. "Ultimately there will be one or two large players," he says. "And we will be one." The prospect of an Internet upstart's becoming a powerhouse worries a lot of financial institutions like banks. Leery that technology may be eroding their relations with digital age customers (if you're doing all your financial transactions over the Net, who needs a bank?), some believe that issuing digital certificates will be one way to stay in the loop. Bankers argue that they are the natural candidates to issue the certificates because they already have a standing relationship with customers. Some want to do just what VeriSign does; others want to offer digital certificates that also verify financial soundness. Say a business wants to participate in an Internet-based commodities auction; it would get a digital certificate from its bank that verifies its identity--and its ability to pay. Today, VeriSign doesn't vouch for the financial reliability of its customers. The company's standard Web certificate for consumers attests only that the holder has jumped through some easy registration hoops, such as supplying VeriSign with a verifiable physical address and an E-mail location. (Analyst Bill Burnham of Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis calls it "the modern version of the library card.") But even if the banks assume the risk of verifying a holder's financial worth, they'll still need certificate technology--and the supplier they turn to could well be VeriSign.

To: TLindt who wrote (147)	3/18/1998 4:43:00 PM
From: jjs_ynot	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2882

TLindt, I thought that you were going to add FDC to portfolio. Did I miss it?? Dave