To: Seconds Out who wrote (4525 ) 12/23/1998 9:59:00 AM From: Kurthend Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 10081
Seconds, I found this on the Yahoo board from Trust2000 who posted as Trust 200. I hope he/she doesn't mind that I plagiarize his work. Trust obviously doesn't post much here on the SI board and as far as I know hasn't posted before today on the Yahoo board. I guess wasting hours on the Yahoo board looking for one bit a useful info may have paid off:) Anyway, here is the post (s): Hi there, response to your questions part 1 by: trust200 (40/M/Zurich-Switzerland) 75757 of 75774 Q: Can you shed any light on your opinion of what is happening with the stock price here, A: IMHO the company is valued as a VC investment with little information about where it is headed. So you get these ups and downs until there is clearer picture about revenue growth. GM told me that they will be communicating more starting 1 jan. Remember that most well known internet IPO's were done AFTER there were $ 1 million quarterly revenues with quarterly doubling. I presented some of my revenue estimates and McCormick gave me some very careful guidance on these projections. My own impression from the meeting is that they will exceed $1 million in revenues in Q1. Not in Q4. Q: and how it may relate to conversions ? A: GM emphasized again that the conversions have nothing to do with the drop in the stock. It is a non-issue. McCormick said that case in point is that 50% of the Series C were already converted with hardly any effect on the stock. Given the misunderstanding about what converts do, he said that it is unlikely that they will ever do a convert again. Q: What kind of timeframes do you think are needed before telco or internet contracts occur, or will become public ? A: They said that they are VERY VERY close to a CELLULAR announcement. As of monday last week they said that it is possible to have such an announcement before the end of the year. Problem with telcos is that their December is very busy. So the date might slip a bit. I feel confident though that the announcement will come either this year or early January. Q: Are there any signed contracts as of yet unannounced ? A: I have no information that is not already in the public domain. The only advantage of having such a one-to-one meeting is to be able to read between the lines. Q: Is there anything in general that you can offer us from your meeting, or analysis on the prospects of GMGC becomming the standard for E commerce ? A: E commerce was not a topic in our meeting. Their expected future revenue split is 50% Internet Partners. 10-15% Portico. rest Telcos. Their plans for the IP distribution channel have been evolving over the last 6 months. INTUIT is the proof that they can deliver. My impression is that they will first focus on getting VUI deals with Telcos and IP's before getting into e-commerce and the like. The key here is how they are going to make money on such partners. Mc Cormick stated that with IP's the client probably gets the VUI for free and GM might have to make its money of advertising while the user accesses the IP through the VUI. Other models are also possible. I am not sure what the potential revenues are here, but it is for sure going to be a key point in their future business model. ie, what is the potential revenue per 1000 users per second. If then 100'000 or 1'000'000 people call in per day to access let's say yahoo through GM's VUI, how much money do they make on ads? For my part I will try to do some numbers on that. Additional revenues will be generated by users who switch into the full portico service after being exposed to it through a simple VUI. But again, hard to say what those conversion rates are going to be. see part 2 Q: What can you add to the thought of strategic partnering, and with whom ? A: GM said that all the well known vertical and horizontal portals are possible and that they are in discussion with a number of them. All these Ip's are now starting to think about VUI etc. he also said that these Internet Partners move much more quickly then the telcos. So announcements re Ip's will come suddenly and ad hoc. It is impossible to give proper investor guidance on this as Markman stated in his memo. I asked about the Netscape/Qwest messaging product and McCormick was evasive. Q: At what point will the "street" take an interest in GM ? A: McCormick believes that if there would be a major IP announcement, that there would be instant Wall Street recognition. So I guess we just have to wait. But given the way the internet business is growing I believe that the wait will not be too long. Other issues: One does not have to be a rocket scientist to see that if they have little revenue and a cash burn of $10mm per quarter that they will run out of cash during 1999. It is clear that they need to look at financing alternatives now instead of waiting until the end of 1999. They look at all possible options and they believe that the most probably outcome is a major strategic partner. They said that a secondary equity issue is very unlikely. And experience has shown that another convert would be too confusing for equity investors. My impression from the meeting is that an announcement with a major strategic partner is likely before the end of Q2. Hope this helps. Good luck