Electronic commerce player CyberCash, Inc. announced a net loss of $9.6 million or $0.68 per share and revenues amounting to roughly $2.5 million for the second quarter.
The loss for the three month period was up from the $6.3 million or $0.58 per share loss for the same period last year. This year’s second quarter revenues were up over 1997 second quarter earnings of $812,361.
The Reston, VA-based company’s president and CEO Bill Melton cited several
second quarter initiatives in an earnings statement today: “We completed our acquisition of ICVERIFY, Inc. and
substantially completed the integration of both companies’ businesses and
resources,” said Melton. “We also introduced several new products,
including CashRegister 3
service, which greatly simplifies the use of our three payment services, and
ICVERIFY for Windows, Version 2.2.”
CyberCash said that in spite of some market doubts surrounding the purchase of ICVERIFY, as well as CyberCash’s new Internet payment pricing models, its transaction and merchant volume was up in the second quarter. The company said retailers employed CyberCash services in processing more than 2.5 million transactions per month, up from 2.0 million transactions per month in first quarter of 1998.
Announcements concerning new alliances with IBM and First Virtual Holdings Inc. were also part of the positive spin CEO Melton put on the quarterly results.
“Under one agreement, IBM will work with CyberCash’s ICVERIFY unit to develop and market a new Internet payment offering that will increase the number of options available to merchants for processing credit card orders,” said Melton. A cross-marketing agreement was also reached between CyberCash and IBM.
“We have just concluded a cooperative
agreement with First Virtual Holdings Incorporated, now a
provider of Internet messaging services, to offer all the merchants and buyers
who previously used First Virtual’s Internet Payment System (IPS) a migration
path to CyberCash’s CashRegister Payment Service,” said Melton. “The
agreement could result
in CyberCash’s providing its premier Internet payment solution to over 2,000
merchants who previously used First Virtual’s IPS.”
In mid-morning trading, CyberCash (NASDAQ: CYCH) was up +1 3/8 trading at 13 5/8.