MyPoints.com COO Steps Down

Already a firm under great duress from slowdowns in advertising spending,
MyPoints.com’s Chief Operating Officer Chaz Berman stepped down Friday to
pursue other interests.

Berman is the second executive to leave the direct marketing firm. Claiming
he lacked the experience to manage “high-growth” companies, Chief Executive
Officer Steve Markowitz resigned November 2 and has not been replaced.

President Layton Han will pull double duty, filling in for the departed
Berman.

Han is somewhat of a long-timer for the company, having served as the firm’s
chief financial officer and then its senior vice president of corporate and
business development. Han presided over the firm’s initial and secondary
public offerings, the acquisition of Cybergold and the development of two of
the outfit’s largest partnerships, MasterCard and Sprint.

Though MyPoints posted a lower loss-per-share than Wall Street’s consensus
estimates (36 cents instead of 39 cents) and doubled revenues from the
previous year, Salomon Smith Barney downgraded the stock from buy to
neutral, claiming the company eked out a “sloppy” quarter and posted
earnings that were still 35 percent under estimates.

The investment firm thought MyPoint’s had worn out its mailing list, a
common problem among direct marketers that can take a year or more to
correct. Known as “list fatigue,” the condition develops when an outfit has
bombarded its client list to the point that its response rate suffers.

Merrill Lynch’s high-profile Internet analyst Henry Blodget was far less
kind then, calling the company’s results “pathetic” after pointing out that
top-line number was a 22.5 percent sequential revenue decline.

MyPoint’s stock was down 5.5 percent to $1.13 in Friday
morning trading.