I came across this transcript of a conference call on May 5th with several United Online execs and stock analysts to discuss their first quarter operations. The parts about MyPoints are highlighted. Make sure you read all the way to the bottom, because they were also discussed in the Q&A following the execs’ statements.
For those of us who were concerned about UNTD’s understanding of or commitment to MyPoints, I can offer the following quotes from UNTD’s CEO, Mark Goldston:
“When the world moves into Web 2.0, we will see many internet companies looking at points programs as a means to differentiate their offerings from competitors, bolster their loyalty, increase their frequency of visits, and to create recurring relationships with their consumers…We not only find the MyPoints standalone business to be highly attractive, but our vision for that business extends to the entire United Online family of companies and users…Ultimately, our goal is to try to integrate a point system into every one of our United Online businesses.”
Also, “We believe MyPoints is an ideal strategic fit for our content and media segment because, like our other properties, it leverages our focus on loyal and active consumers. It is branded. It expands our network of online advertising properties, communicates with members extensively through targeted e-mail, and, most importantly, MyPoints can be featured as a branded loyalty incentive across all of our North American internet services at United Online.”
Goldston also confirmed some other stats on MyPoints that I’d heard elsewhere: MyPoints has around 4.5 million members and earned about $38.4 million in revenue in 2005, up about 44% from the previous year. Of this $38.4 million in revenue, only about $2.4 million was profit (if I’m interpreting what he said correctly; another $2.4 million was written off to depreciation/amortization).
What I think is good about MyPoints’ sale to UNTD is that it gives MyPoints the opportunity to grow tremendously as members of other UNTD companies like NetZero, Juno, and Classmates.com are brought into the fold. And with higher membership numbers, MyPoints will be able to negotiate better rebates and more diverse offers. It’ll be interesting to revisit this again in a year or two and see where MyPoints stands after a few years under UNTD’s umbrella.
Thanks to SeekingAlpha.com for sharing the transcript!
