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Technology Stocks
PRMZ - Primis, Inc.

An SI Board Since January 2000

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Emcee: westpacific	Type: Unmoderated

Introduction Compact

PRIMIS INC (PRMZ)
S-1 Filing (SEC form S1)
We are a leading business-to-business, web-based provider of property information services in the United States. We provide appraisals, home inspections, title services, flood determinations, energy audits, valuation tools and other related property information services, all of which our clients can order, monitor, receive and pay for over the Internet using a standard web browser. We provide our services to large national mortgage lenders, regional and local mortgage lenders and brokers, Internet lenders, specialized lenders, utility companies and real estate professionals.

Currently, the property information services industry is fragmented among thousands of local appraisal, inspection, title services and other firms. These firms generally lack the resources to invest heavily in service delivery infrastructure, and we believe that service quality can vary significantly between firms. By contrast, our business model includes the following features:

NATIONAL SERVICE DELIVERY CAPABILITIES. We are a single, national provider of property information services. We currently have company-owned offices in over 40 markets, including 29 of the top 50 residential real estate markets in the country. We expect to be in markets covering over 50% of all U.S. mortgage loan originations by the end of 2000, primarily through acquisitions but also through organic growth. We service customers in markets where we do not have company-owned operations through our PRIMISnet network of contract appraisers and home inspectors.

FLEXIBLE WEB-BASED PLATFORM. Our web-based platform enables our clients to place orders, check the status of orders, receive reports in electronic format, receive invoices and pay for services, all by using a standard web browser. Although we currently derive the majority of our revenues from services delivered through traditional methods, we are rapidly moving our clients to our web-based platform. Our flexible platform will allow our larger clients to bypass the web interface and connect their loan origination systems directly with the PRIMIS engine, our transaction processing technology. This direct connection will enable these clients to order our services when they originate loans without additional data entry, and thereby encourage them to outsource more of their property information services to us.

HIGH, CONSISTENT QUALITY STANDARDS. We maintain a rigorous quality assurance program to ensure consistently high-quality service across all of our offices. This quality assurance includes senior-level review of all reports, a dedicated quality assurance team and continuing education and training for all of our professionals. In addition, we deploy technology internally to automate service delivery, improve the productivity of our field employees and improve the quality and comprehensiveness of our reports.

FAST, EFFICIENT SERVICE DELIVERY. We deliver our property information services to our clients quickly and efficiently. Our web-based platform removes many of the time-consuming faxes, phone calls, paper deliveries and other delays associated with searching for local service providers, scheduling appointments, ordering services, checking order status and receiving reports. As an example, we can usually provide a full appraisal to our large, national clients in 5 days or less, whereas we believe other service providers to these clients typically require 7 to 14 days. We intend to offer our larger clients one-day full appraisal services in certain areas.

Our clients include 7 of the top 10 and 31 of the top 50 mortgage lenders in the United States. We have acquired 21 businesses since 1995, including 9 since the beginning of 1999. As we execute our business model, we are compiling what we believe will be the most comprehensive database of property information in the industry, which we believe in the long-term will become one of our most valuable assets.

OUR MARKET OPPORTUNITY

As Internet business-to-business trade accelerates into a period of "hyper-growth" over the next five years, according to projections by Forrester Research, we believe that our web-based technology platform, national service delivery capabilities and quality control will position us well to capture a significant portion of the business-to-business market for property information services. We believe that the total market for our core home appraisal, home inspection and title services is in excess of $5.5 billion annually. We also believe there are additional market opportunities in the other property information services we provide, such as energy audits, valuation tools, commercial appraisals, appraisal reviews, construction inspections and environmental inspections.

There are two trends occurring in the mortgage lending industry which we believe will drive demand for our services. First, the mortgage lending industry is undergoing significant consolidation. In 1998, the largest 20 lenders originated, underwrote or funded over 40% of all residential mortgage loans in the United States. We believe that thousands of fragmented local appraisal, inspection and other property information service firms cannot well serve this consolidating lending industry. We believe these major lenders will increasingly seek to consolidate their property information services with fewer providers and will demand technology-based cost and time efficiencies and consistent quality. Second, Internet lenders have emerged which, according to Forrester Research, will capture a 10% share of the mortgage lending market by 2003. This trend will intensify competition, which we believe will further drive demand for faster turnaround times and cost-efficient services.

OUR STRATEGY

Our objective is to be the leading provider of property information services in the United States. To accomplish this objective, we intend to do the following:

- Leverage our flexible web-based platform to deliver our services more
efficiently to our clients, and leverage our internal technology to
improve productivity and quality;

- Migrate our clients, a majority of which still obtain services through
traditional phone and fax channels, to web-based service delivery;

- Expand our national footprint, primarily through acquisitions but also
through organic growth;

- Aggressively target large, national accounts that we believe will benefit
most from a national provider of efficiently delivered, high-quality
property information services;

- Develop and monetize the valuable database of property information that we
are compiling into new valuation tools and service offerings; and

- Evolve our PRIMISnet network of local contract appraisers and inspectors
into close affiliates with whom we share our technology and clients in
exchange for local business referrals and property data.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

In January 2000, we acquired InspecTech Corporation, the third largest home inspection firm in the United States. Through this acquisition, we entered the market for home inspection services with a force of nearly 100 property inspectors. InspecTech performed over 30,000 inspections in 1999.

In January 2000, we entered into a letter of intent with Trans Union LLC, one of the three major U.S. credit agencies, under which Trans Union will engage us to provide property information services for a majority of the loans which Trans Union services. Also in January 2000, we entered into letters of intent with the construction lending division of Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., under which Countrywide will retain us to provide appraisal review and inspection services over the next two years.

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