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Technology Stocks : S1: Doing Business in a Dot Com Depression, -V1 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jjs64 who wrote (398)	5/17/1999 1:53:00 PM
From: Doug (Htfd,CT)	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1013

Intuit (Nasdaq: INTU) will invest $50 million in Security First Technologies (Nasdaq: SONE) shares and the two companies will cross-license technologies in a deal announced May 17. biz.yahoo.com Intuit will have options to acquire over 5 million additional SONE shares (worth an additional $250 MM at the S-1 share price at the time of the announcement) if SONE concludes other acquisitions announced the same day: the purchase of its competitor Edify (Nasdaq: EDFY) and of FICS Group N.V., a privately held European provider of back-room applications for financial services companies. The FICS transaction is valued at about $1 billion, and the Edify transaction at about $345 million. S-1 will issue stock for the two companies, if the deals are approved by shareholders. The two acquisitions will bring to S-1 active presences, customers and operations in the European Union and in Silicon Valley, while SONE remains based in Atlanta under its present CEO. At the time of the announcement, SONE had a market capitalization of under $1.5 Billion. These deals would roughly double S-1's market capitalization, could significantly increase the breadth of its footprint in the online financial services sector, and facilitate its extension into the online insurance marketplace. Combining Intuit's InsureMarket with S-1's existing "data center for hire" enables quick private labelling of similar insurance market spaces. These announcements add to earlier announced alliances cemented by equity investment by major money center banksl, insurance companies, including Royal Bank of Canada (which bought the Security First Network Bank operation), Huntington Bancshares, Citigroup (Travelers) and State Farm Insurance, as well as technology companies and advisors Broadvision, Hewlett-Packard and Anderson Consulting. Employment listings in Boston newspapers and at S-1's web site ( s1.com ) indicate that it is hiring programmers and insurance specialists in its Boston office to build what it there calls "the next generation, Internet-based insurance product" and its most recent quarterly report discloses over $2 million in revenues for development of insurance systems. These investments are believed by many to be coming from State Farm, which took an equity position in S-1 last year, and recently opened its own federally chartered thrift institution, which it reports will commence Internet banking sometime this year. Under the terms of this latest deal with Intuit, SONE will gain the ability to offer its bank customers private-labelled versions of Intuit's suite of financial service applications, including its popular Quicken, TurboTax and Quickbooks programs, plus access to Intuit's online services that include WebTurboTax, QuickBooks Online Payroll, Quicken.com Financial Planners, QuickenMortgage and QuickenInsureMarket. Intuit's QuickenInsureMarket provides online quote and issue for life, auto and homeowners insurance from selected carriers, from insuremarket.com . The license of that technology may enable S-1 customer institutions to offer similar, private-labelled online insurance marts to their customers, featuring risk-bearers of their own selection. S-1 also provides data center services, enabling full "turn-key" operation of a privately labelled online financial operation from S-1 facilities. Additional background information is available at S-1's web site at s1.com , on Yahoo! Financial at biz.yahoo.com and in a background hyperlinked article at dougsimpson.com Doug Simpson

To: jjs64 who wrote (398)	5/19/1999 6:46:00 AM
From: john g	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1013

ubj: Steve Harmon comments Date: 5/19/99 6:18:03 AM Eastern Daylight Time 99.05.18 - Security First (NASDAQ:SONE - news) decides to leap into the big leagues with a $1 billion buy of Europe's FICS, which makes software for banks. On the heels of that deal the Web bank software maker decides to snap up Edify for $17.87 per share or $345 million. Pro forma SONE will have a third of the world's leading 100 financial institutions using its service. Relatedly, finance software maker Intuit likes what it sees and invests $50 million, or $51.50 per share, for 2.5% of SONE. Deal swirl which makes sense in this unabridged sector. At $637 million market cap for SONE I don't know why Intuit stopped at 2.5%. To me Security First has taken a big step and raised its profile and leverage.