>>Zuma Rk is going to publish the full report.>>
Well, I guess the ball's in my court.
As per usual, I'm a bit time crunched today, but I'll give some early impressions...
Now, even though I have a "numbers" background, when looking at new industries I'm more apt to focus on the "softer" details. Quite frankly, I couldn't care less if it takes two quarters or two years for CF to reach critical mass, provided that they maintain a leadership position. In the short term, my own (humble) personal criteria revolves around management integrity, employee morale, and getting the company's message out to the masses (both to customers and investors).
Having said that, my overall impression of the meeting was that there was not much that was "new" to be learned, but to paraphrase Mr. Gintel, "perhaps hearing Pete do his presentation one more time, "I'll finally understand what the heck this company is all about" (big <g>)...
Corporate Headquarters:
Unbelievably impressive HQ. On first blush, a conservative shareholder would wince at the money that was spent on this place. However, on the positive side, virtually all the trimmings were picked up through a CF acquisition (Servantis, I believe). The employees seem to be (appropriately) well versed in reiterating that important distinction when it is brought up in conversation.
The conference/training center was immaculate and well appointed, with modern presentation areas (and importantly) small, technology-centric classrooms, presumably for training customer service employees. They have a full-service, subsidised employee cafeteria, a lounge, and various activities to support comeraderie amoung the staff.
Having said that, the corporate culture around the place is enviable. Granted, everyone had their best "shareholder meeting-faces" on, but there is such effort to look after employees in a clean, casual, supportive environment that it's hard not to want to do business with the company. Management deserves a lot of credit for instilling such a proactive environment (which, along with employee stock options, should help retain key people as competitive pressures increase)...
On to the meeting:
I'd say there were only about 40-or-so people there, with a "Suit" (i.e. anal-yst)-to-casual ratio of about 25%. I'd guess that about 1/2 of the attendees were employees.
Pete was the sole speaker, with an updated presentation since the Florida conference. I would paraphrase the major themes as such (also, please bear in mind that I'm adding my own colorization to the comments made, so please don't take any of this as gospel according to CF):
* a big shift from the "banks as the trusted agency" theme to "billers (led by ATT) are getting into the drivers seat." Pete basically intimated that CF will provide the technology to whoever wants to present bills electronically, and work to get a solution in place in the shortest possible time. And by the way, the banks remain CF's first choice as consolidator, but we'll work with whatever viable institutions that consumers want to bring this to market...
* New theme of "from paper to pulse" -- CF guesstimates that it could take about 3 to 4 years for 1/3 of U.S. households to reach critical mass with EBPP, but it's very difficult to predict when that will actually happen.
* globally, big segments of the "new" economy is moving from "mass market" distribution to internet-based "1-to-1 enablers on a mass scale basis." My read on this is basically -- have the ability to customize my personal banking/bill paying/web surfing experience for me, and be able to leverage up that same capability to anyone and everyone else (i.e. genesis, CF's customer care technology and its joint venture partners).
* Pete reiterated that CF believes it has dominant industry leadership in the following six areas: EBPP, Portfolio Management, ACH transactions, high-speed account reconciliation, compliance, and health/fitness e-commerce (i.e. the founding business). Importantly, he reiterated the importance of not being necessarily "smug" in this leadership position. (I guess we all know what happened to Netscape). He also mentioned that the software divestiture program is basically done (I actually hypothesised that all the Portfolio news releases that had been coming out were designed to tee up the product for sale -- guess not).
----more to come later
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