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Technology Stocks : EFAX.com - easy-to-use fax-to-email technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Roger A. Babb who wrote (1037)	4/23/1999 12:19:00 PM
From: Brasco One	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1197

Roger, the Street.com's take on this stinky business: JetFax (EFAX:Nasdaq) has labored in the trenches of technology since 1998, making fax-related hardware and licensing embedded-systems technology to companies like Hewlett-Packard (HWP:NYSE). Its stock sat out 1998's tech-stock surge, sliding steadily from its then-all-time high of 7 3/16 to 1 17/32 in late November. But things changed Feb. 8, when management wrapped the company into an e-package, changed its name and started offering a new, free Internet service: giving people a free telephone number to receive faxes, then forwarding those faxes to users' email boxes. The only problem is that it's a money-losing strategy with no clear profit model. You may remember my colleague Herb Greenberg's mention of how much he liked JetFax's free phone number and ability to receive his faxes via email, especially once it worked out the glitches in the system. According to JetFax's Securities and Exchange Commission filings, the company organized a subsidiary -- eFax -- to offer the fax-to-email service and to change the company's name by merging JetFax into the new e-company. And it seemed to have worked -- for a while. Hence the stock soared, closing above 30 April 9. JetFax plummeted to less than 20 Monday, falling alongside its brethren in the near meltdown that day in the tech arena. But JetFax may have contributed to that free-fall by filing with regulators Friday to explain that while its stock ticker was now EFAX, the name change had run afoul of the Delaware General Corporation Law. The official name must remain JetFax until next month's stockholder meeting. Another reason for the stock's decline could have arisen April 16, when a similar company drew attention away from JetFax. JFax.com, the first email/fax/unified-messaging company, founded in 1995 by East German rap/rocker Jaye Mueller, filed its IPO registration that day to raise up to $90 million. Mueller designed his original fax-via-email system so he could stay in touch with associates while his band was on tour. JFax.com recently changed its name from Jfax International. Like JetFax, it offers a free phone number with fax service, then ups the ante with voice-mail delivery to customers' email. For the service, both companies select the area code for customers' fax numbers. JetFax, to its credit, landed one in my same area code while JFax stuck me with an area code some 150 miles away. Whereas JetFax's Web site only hints at premium services to come, JFax, for $12.50 a month, gives customers a phone number in their choice of 60 area codes around the world complete with unified messaging. Users can check voice messages and faxes through their email or call a toll-free number to get their email by phone, voice mail and notification of faxes received. This is the cyberequivalent of an executive suite office in cyberspace and is something a virtual business or frequent traveler can rely on. JFax has also been doing the fax part of this since late 1995 -- two or three generations when you're living on Internet time -- which means it has had more time to get the bugs out and build a base of 27,000 premium subscribers. Of course, JetFax has paying customers too, but they're all traditional purchasers and licensees. So it's no surprise that JetFax -- being an old-fashioned tech company of sorts -- has been losing less money than its competition: $1.5 million in 1998 compared with JFax, which saw its losses balloon to $11.9 million last year. Of course, JetFax has a fundamental problem: No matter how many times its news releases describe it as "an Internet fax-to-email service provider," its main business is not a .com. And while JetFax stock soared 70% March 15 when it announced a deal to supply Xoom.Com (XMCM:Nasdaq) with its service, JFax has long had deals with Yahoo! (YHOO:Nasdaq), America Online (AOL:NYSE), Ameritech (AIT:NYSE) and a laundry list of others. This battle of the e-fax companies has obviously just begun, and it will heat up even more once JFax goes public. ----------------------------------------- bad smell!