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Vonage IPO
mesowarny writes "The street writes: Vonage Holdings, moved to become the first major Internet telephony player to go public by filing Wednesday to raise up to $250 million via an initial offering of stock and named a Tyco International executive as CEO. Our revenues were $18.7million in 2003, $79.7million in 2004, and $174.0 million for the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2005," the company's prospectus says."While our revenues have grown rapidly, we have experienced increasing net losses, primarily driven by our increase in marketing expenses. From the period of inception through Sept.30, 2005, our cumulative net loss was $310 million. Our net loss for the nine months ended Sept.30, 2005, was $189.6million. During the same nine-month period, our marketing expenses were $176.3million."
No link to Vonage?
Seriously, I'm really impressed by their success so far. Many of my non-geek friends and family are starting to use Vonage - it beats the heck out of SBC.
Something that frustrates me, though, is the apparent lack of VOIP for small businesses. I have a small company where my partner and I work from our home offices and on the road, about an hour away from each other. Every call is long distance. We're paying through the nose for our cell phones, which barely work in our houses anyway. Looking around, I've only found a handful of VOIP companies that are affordable, and most of them don't seem to be very helpful for my situation. We were talking about how cool it would be to set up an Asterisk box so we could have the voicemail, forwarding, etc. It's just not something I have time for.
The Vonage business service doesn't seem like much more than a residential+fax line. Another place I saw sent you a box you had to set up but it was pricy. It's like there's no in-between.
Anyone have a suggestion?
Technically, the Tyco fiasco was only Kozlowski (former CEO), Swartz (former CFO), and Belnick (former chief legal officer). Essentially, they took out personal, no interest, loans from the company totalling $170m without informing shareholders. This was later written off as benefits which the benefits committee did not approve beforehand. (Although, I have my doubts about the possibility that $170m in personal loans would go unnoticed by other people within the company.)
In my opinion this is a questionable business decision at best. Vonage has all the earmarks of a mid 90's "bubble" company with a shaky at best business plan. Now, they go public on unstable ground and hire a person from Tyco as CEO. While he may not have contributed to the scandal at Tyco, anything associated with Tyco has, deserved or not, a bad reputation associated with it. This wouldn't be my first choice as hire if I was trying to convince potential stockholders to invest.
$sys$droids
Vonage IPO Propectus:0 104746906001567/a2167036zs-1.htm
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1272830/00
VoIP is cool stuff and can save you a bundle on your phone bills (if you make many long-distance calls). BUT make sure your internet connection is good enough for it. It's not just about throughput, you need low latency and low jitter as well. Anyway, try your connection out at http://testyourvoip.com/ a few different times of the day and make sure it is worth your time.
My Dad and a couple of co-workers have Vonage and they all love it. Unfortunately my DSL is pretty much at the limit of the distance from the local telephone CO so my line is not up as much as I want my phone to be... ah well.
-ben