Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : CheckFree Holdings Corp. (CKFR), the next Dell, Intel? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: HRM who wrote (1349)	1/16/1999 11:31:00 AM
From: JimNewby	Respond to of 20297

One of the best overall compressed views of Check Free I have seen. Maybe BB can forward it to the Webmaster of CKFR as well? Jim edit: Counters TP's comments extremly well!

To: HRM who wrote (1349)	1/16/1999 1:21:00 PM
From: BitWizrd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20297

>>>I recently completed my review of CF <<< I hereby nominate Harry as Keeper of the CheckFree Shareholder's FAQ. Seriously. This will be a good excercise. Let's submit additions or corrections for inclusion. We should work as a team to make sure they are accurate, and Harry will be in charge of maintaining it and e-mailing it to CKFR newcomers when they ask overview type questions. I'm up for it, how 'bout you, Harry? Bit.

To: HRM who wrote (1349)	1/16/1999 2:45:00 PM
From: james m. schultz	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20297

Harry, thank you for your input. It is members like you who provide opportunity of greater dialogue on this company, unlike others that post and add value only unto themselves. I will substantially add to my current position shortly. I have read the 10K and have these questions from the 10K. Paper billing: "It is estimated that over 15 billion paper bills are produced each year, and that the cost of submitting a printed bill, including printing, postage, and advertisements, ranges between $0.65 and $1.25." Is that worldwide? Business payments: "It is estimated that businesses issue more than 28 billion checks annually." Does that include the latter 15 billion paper bills? Is the cost related to business payments in the same ranges as above? E-Commerce Services: "Revenues are generated through contracts that the Company signs with individual financial institutions. Although the structure of contracts vary, the Company typically negotiates with the institution an implementation fee, a monthly base fee per customer account on the service provided by the Company, plus a variable per transaction fee which decreases based on the volume of transactions. Contracts typically have one-to-three year terms and generally provide for minimum fees if certain transaction volumes are not met. The Company utilizes direct sales and distribution alliances to market to financial institutions and has the ability to customize services for each institution". It seems to me that monthly fees per customer, and transaction fees is where the money and future is, and has yet to be realized on a large scale, how can this be quantified? What is the per transaction fees that decrease on volume? Ranges? Government regs.: "If the Federal Reserve rules were to change to further restrict access to the ACH or limit the Company's ability to provide ACH transaction processing services, the Company's business could be materially adversely affected". "Because of growth in the electronic commerce market, Congress has held hearings on whether to regulate providers of services and transactions in the electronic commerce market, and it is possible that Congress or individual states could enact laws regulating the electronic commerce market". This bothers me a bit. Any thoughts? jim

To: HRM who wrote (1349)	1/16/1999 9:31:00 PM
From: TLindt	Respond to of 20297

-- Intuit - CheckFree is the exclusive* provider of bill payment/presentment for Quicken, Quicken.com, BankNow, etc. Quicken has about a 80% market share.* In the pruchase of ISC from INTU...there was en exclusitivity free which CheckFree was paying to INTU...that expired this summer...they had made a couple of payments each at $10,000,000. In early August I'm guessing the met to discuss renewal terms...at that time INTU also announced to us users of Invester Insite that that $9.95 a month service was going to be discontinued. CheckFree provided backend on that service too....I'm guessing that the deal did not renew...and that's why we saw verying 'total subscriber numebers in August' 2.3 2.2 2.4 Millions. And there was also, and I'm guessing another reason for a revenue adjustment for 1999. Becasue Invester Insight server 100's of thousand paying subscribers at 10 bucks a month...can't remember exactly...but 1 or 2 100 thousand comes to mine. Anyway it's no longer an 'exclusive deal' as it had been.... Wednesday November 4, 11:04 am Eastern Time Company Press Release SOURCE: Princeton TeleCom Corporation Princeton TeleCom Announces Plan to Send Bills Through Intuit Products PRINCETON, N.J., Nov. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Princeton TeleCom Corporation announced today that it has signed a letter of intent with Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq: INTU - news) to make bill statements published by Princeton TeleCom available through Quicken(R) and eventually Quicken.com. The deal furthers the company's goal of making its billing companies' bill statements available on as many presentment opportunities as possible. According to Dick Corl, Executive Vice President, of the Princeton firm, ''this newest presentment channel gives further credence to Princeton TeleCom's unbranded publishing model where, as a biller centric electronic bill statement publisher and payments processor, we make available billing information to our billers' customers wherever they go. Intuit's Quicken software and Internet sites have proven to be very popular financial tools for the PC literate consumer marketplace, and this agreement gets our clients' billing information to this important community'' Corl adds, ''we have consistently urged our biller clients to avoid fully vertical presentment channels, but rather, have their bill published throughout the presenting community, including financial institutions.'' The Company says the agreement with Intuit will allow Quicken users to access and authorize for payment those bills published by Princeton TeleCom. The agreement creates the processing channel for Intuit users' payments to be processed via the Princeton TeleCom els Electronic Lockbox Service(R). As a strong advocate of open standards, Intuit supports Princeton TeleCom's standards-based approach to bill presentment and payment,'' said Eric Dunn, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Intuit, based in Mountain View, CA. ''We look forward to working with them to provide bills to Quicken and Quicken.com users.'' The two companies said that the infrastructure to support the financial exchange of billing and payment data will utilize the open architecture of Open Financial Exchange (OFX) and Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX), the standard to be formed from the convergence of Open Financial and Integrion's GOLD standard. The presentments will also feature a ''hyperlink opportunity'' which will encourage Quicken users to click through to Princeton TeleCom's Publishing Servers to view the image of the bill. Princeton TeleCom Corporation, founded in 1983, by a group of Princeton University professors, is a privately held company and a leading value added processor of electronically captured and disbursed payments. In August 1998, Billing Concepts (Nasdaq: BILL - news) acquired 22% of the capital stock of Princeton TeleCom Corporation. Princeton TeleCom Corporation offers several advanced payment solutions including els Electronic Lockbox Service(R), PAID Payments Acquisition through Interactive Devices(R), 800-PayBill(R), e-Collect(TM) and Internet Bill Publishing. These services employ state-of-the-art technologies such as Inference, Digital Scanline(R), and Systemic Anamnesis. Princeton TeleCom Corp. is headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey and maintains satellite sales offices in Omaha, Nebraska and Los Angeles, California. Intuit Inc., a financial software and Web-based services company, develops and markets Quicken, the leading personal finance software; TurboTax(R), the best-selling tax preparation software; and QuickBooks(R), the most popular small business accounting software. Intuit's Quicken.com(TM) Web site offers a complete set of personal financial news, information and tools, including the leading mutual fund and insurance sites. Intuit products and services enable individuals, small businesses and financial professionals to better manage their financial lives and businesses. Certain statements contained herein are ''forward-looking'' statements (as such term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995). Because such statements include risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, those discussed in filings made by the Company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. SOURCE: Princeton TeleCom Corporation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- More Quotes and News: Billing Information Concepts Corp (Nasdaq:BILL - news) Intuit Inc (Nasdaq:INTU - news)

To: HRM who wrote (1349)	6/25/1999 8:56:00 PM
From: HRM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20297

Why am I here? Weeks like this are why you want to understand why you buy a stock in the first place. Some Friday evening musings to see if any thing has changed - The Competition The major competition appears to be developing in the form of the TransPoint service which is a joint venture of Microsoft, First Data, and CitiGroup. Several smaller players as well as homegrown systems from financial institutions exist. This market (IMHO) will be one that demands scale (or a defined market niche) in order to compete successfully. This is very similar to the situation in the financial services market today. There we see a great deal of consolidation occurring as we go from a large number of players to a smaller number of scale players plus niche players. In CheckFree's market, we have a relatively small number of players in a rapidly expanding market with some fairly sizeable barriers to entry. Thus my expectation is that the market is likely to evolve with 2 - 3 scale players controlling around 80% of the market and a number of smaller players splitting up the remaining 20%. Even 1/3 of 80% of the ultimate market would provide tremendous growth opportunities for CheckFree. Ok, we potentially have added one of the scale players, but 1/3 of 80% of the ultimate market is still attractive. Keys to Success The primary key to success (IMHO) is distribution. Then come service, product, and technology. These factors are interrelated since you need to meet minimum levels of service, product, and technology to play the game and they can be important factors in differentiating yourself with the distribution systems. And CheckFree currently has the major portion of the distribution systems in their corner. It possesses electronic banking and billing relationships with 40 of the top 50 banks in the US and 25 of the top 100 billers (including the largest AT&T and 8 of the top 10) representing 56% of the telecommunications bills sent in the US. It serves the electronic billing gateway for the Integrion banks and is in a joint venture with Visa for providing on-line payment of electronic bills. It also has reached an agreement with Oracle to use their databases which will provide access to the Oracle sales system to help maintain their lead in distribution. Ok, Integrion isn't adding much if anything. Still have banking relationships, but getting some potential competition here. But added portals to the mix. I dunno guys - looks like a net gain in the long run. Current Advantages Relationships -- Integrion alliance - CheckFree is the preferred bill payment/presentment provider. Integrion collectively represents 75% of the Check books in the U.S. In addition to Integrion, CF has contracts with 300+ banks. -- Intuit - CheckFree provides bill payment/presentment for Quicken, Quicken.com, BankNow, etc. Quicken has about a 80% market share. -- CheckFree has contracts with 24 of the largest biller, including the largest biller, and the largest statement processor. -- Visa Deal - This will allow CheckFree to process 85% of their transactions electronically. -- AT&T relationship. CheckFree added relationships with new distribution outlets at expense of some rough spots with existing relationships (eg, just worked through Intuit spat / TEX announcement.) But again, it seems to have positioned company better for the long run. Experience -- CheckFree has spent years building a merchant database that is unmatched, and allows CheckFree to pay bills on time with consistency. -- CheckFree has been in the business for 15 years and understands it. Technology -- CheckFree has working systems -- They have completed development of their next generation technology and are in the process of rolling it out. Next generation system out. Everything else stills hold. Did right by their customers when handling glitch in the new system recently. Barriers to Entry -- Long term contracts. CheckFree has 10 year contracts with many of its distributors. -- CheckFree has been paying bills electronically for 16 years, and is the proven market leader. Bill payment is a very difficult process. -- CheckFree has locked up the banks, and therefore, locked up the best interface for paying bills - On-line Banking. -- "Dial tone" quality required in this market. The financial service firms which are their customers require processes and systems which work right 24/7/365. They can't afford to be working with a provider who is learning on the job. Through its ACH payment work, CheckFree has built up a trust relationship with its customers and an understanding of their requirements. ok, so the banks aren't as locked up as I thought. But in the interim, my thinking has evolved to where I see on-line banking type activities coming from more sources then just the old brick and mortar banks. I am no longer sure they will even be the preferred source going forward. And I think the trend to outsourcing back office functions in order to concentrate on core competencies is going to increase. Bottom line from my perspective - changes over the last 6 months have been net positive. HRM