Company

theFinancials.com has been online since the beginning of 1999 with the mission of publishing "Compelling Content for Websites and Investors."  theFinancials.com is a B2B and B2C firm specializing in the publication and distribution of value-added market data reports, charts, commentary, news and real-time information for financially-oriented websites, online financial service firms, financial publishers and individual investors.

Products

Website Content - Our B2B product is website stickiness.  We offer a variety of content formats with varying degrees of stickiness.  The stickier the format, the higher the cost.  Less sticky formats are provided free of charge to websites and serve to gain mind share and click-through traffic for theFinancials.com.  In effect, these free formats are free ad banners with an important difference: rather than detracting from the partner’s website, they add value to the website, which makes them easy to market.  Other factors that make them easy to market include: ease of installation – our thumbnail reports can be installed on existing pages by simply adding a few lines of HTML at the spot where the partner wants the report to appear; customization – theFinancials.com will customize the colors and contents of the report to precisely match the partner’s site, free of charge.  Example of a free format providing branding and click-through benefits to theFinancials.com: http://theFinancials.com/intro/Cobrand.html.

Sticky formats - By changing the “details & history” link on the free thumbnail format described above to a page on the partner’s site, as opposed to a page at theFinancials.com, the stickiness of the format is increased.  This stickier format is offered for $45/mo for reach report.  Even stickier, private label versions with no links to theFinancials.com are offered at $95/mo for reach report.  Example of a sticky thumbnail: http://theFinancials.com/intro/StickyThumbnail.html.

The “details & history” link on the sticky version above links to a page that displays a full report that includes historical figures, volatility analysis and charts, like this example: http://theFinancials.com/intro/StickyFull.html.  The full reports link to commentary and analysis, such as this report for the Euro: http://theFinancials.com/intro/StickyComment.html.

Through partnerships with Standard & Poor’s Global Markets and Infotec, theFinancials.com provides comprehensive financial content that integrates S&P global analysis and Infotec’s real-time quotes with our end-of-day and historical content.  These partnerships allow us to deliver a complete picture of a market.  Example of S&P's GlobalMarkets.com analysis integrated with theFinancials.com’s content: http://theFinancials.com/intro/SP.html.  Example of real-time quotes integrated with theFinancials.com’s content: http://theFinancials.com/intro/Focus.html.

Destination Sites - theFinancials.com operates several B2C destination sites serving investors interested in foreign currencies and interest rates (http://currencies.theFinancials.com/), commodities http://commodities.theFinancials.com/) and indices (http://indices.theFinancials.com/).  The B2B content offered to other sites is available to individual investors at these Market Libraries under a variety of subscription plans.  Visitors can access much of the content for free, more content if they register and still more if they subscribe to plans ranging from $5.95-$69.95 per month.  These sites serve as showcases for our B2B offerings.  Links on B2B content drive visitors to these destination sites where they are offered subscription plans, as well as customized content for their own website.  Our free and cobranded B2B content is part of a self-perpetuating traffic-building model.

Newsletters - Each month theFinancials.com publishes and distributes more than 180,000 copies of 16 free email newsletters through partnerships with 12 market professionals.  Example of a free newsletter: http://theFinancials.com/intro/NL.html.

Our newsletter formula is similar to the free television model: 1) theFinancials.com provides all newsletters to subscribers for free, 2) Contributors provide commentary to theFinancials.com for free, 3) theFinancials.com delivers a targeted, motivated community of investors to contributors in return for their commentary, 4) theFinancials.com sells newsletter sponsorships to advertisers who get banners and links on the newsletters for $0.0125 per copy.

This model is working very well for both our partners and our company.  We have a 3-month backlog of newsletter sponsorship orders and frequent offers by contributors offering their commentary.

Data Services - theFinancials.com has an extensive database of historical foreign exchange, interest rate, commodity and index information that we use to supply websites with current-day prices and up to 20 years of daily historical data for more than 500 instruments.  We deliver daily updates and historical data sets to firms who wish to automate their system maintenance and/or outsource statistical functions to theFinancials.com (such as volatility calculations).

Technology

theFinancials.com obtains raw data from reputable sources (Reuters, S&P DRI, Financial Times Information), adds value to that data through quality presentation and aggregation with independent commentary, news and real-time quotes, packages the results into a variety of compelling, functional formats and delivers it to websites.  These functions are performed at very low administrative and overall cost using our proprietary system, called Impact, which also collects subscriber details, processes payments and automates site maintenance tasks.  Impact gives theFinancials.com a competitive advantage because we can offer highly customized products and services for free or at affordable prices.

Advantages

theFinancials.com is an attractive option for web producers who face the “build or buy” decision when adding financial content to their sites because theFinancials.com will tailor the content’s stickiness to precisely fit their budget and will tailor the content’s style to precisely fit their design.  theFinancials.com also represents a one-stop shop for site owners who are looking to seamlessly add a variety of content from multiple sources.  Whether it’s real-time quotes, statistical analysis, charts, raw data, news or newsletters, we have the system and partnerships that deliver.  theFinancials.com has built a niche in the commodity market and foreign exchange market, which is the largest market in the world and growing rapidly.

Competition

• GoInvest.com – a quality site specializing in private label content.  Their product pricing begins at $995/month.  theFinancials.com is significantly more affordable and can deliver more customized solutions.

• BigCharts – nice charts and reports but focused narrowly on equities.

• U.S. Developers – while they do address the commodities and futures markets their presentation is inferior.

These competitors do not offer the range of products and services, level of customization nor prices offered by theFinancials.com.

Revenue Streams

The company has developed and tested a business model for attracting financial websites and individual investors to online offerings that generate revenue.  In a short time the model has proven to be very effective at building the following revenue streams, with one employee and without a nickel spent on promotion.  Please contact us for actual revenue figures.

1. B2B content/data revenue 

2. Site advertising revenue

3. Newsletter sponsorship revenue

4. Site subscription revenue

Most of these are long-term revenue streams that are automatically renewed until cancelled.  Only site advertising and newsletter sponsorships need to be re-sold periodically.  However, both of these sources are sold through August.

Results

• iSyndicate contacted us a couple months ago to offer our Market Focus Reports (http://theFinancials.com/Syndicated.html) on their site.  We will be live on iSyndicate.com in mid June.

• Due to our "forex expertise and content-publishing experience," Prima Publishing contracted with us to write a book titled Electronic Currency Trading for Maximum Profit.  The writing process began in April and the book is due next spring.  This is a great opportunity to cross-market the book and website (http://theFinancials.com/book).

• We recently closed a deal to provide our Metals Market Focus reports to MaterialNet.com.

• Re:Source Media, producers of a television series called "Money World," is building a complimentary portal at http://www.gomoneyworld.com/ in partnership with AGF Mutual Funds.  Re:Source Media has contacted theFinancials.com to provide all commodity, currency, interest rate and index content for the new site.

• Our traffic has doubled from 2,000 visitors/day to more than 4,000 visitors/day during the past 3 months.

• theFinancials.com began publishing a free market newsletter in November, 1999.  During the next 6 months, monthly circulation grew to 180,000 copies of 16 newsletters through partnerships with 12 market professionals.

• Site banner advertising and newsletter sponsorships are sold out through August.

• We have more than 50 co-branding partners and more than 4,000 site subscribers.

• theFinancials.com has never purchased any form of promotion.  We are doing all we can to keep up with the business that comes through our doors.

This last point is why we are now contacting investment and strategic partners.  We have developed business formulas that are working in both the B2B and B2C arenas.  We would like to develop these activities further and need resources to do so.

Plans

theFinancials.com is in a pre-commercial stage of development seeking investors and/or partners to help move the firm to a mass-market stage.  We are in need of $2M to hire market development professionals, content designers, producers and developers and to implement an aggressive marketing and development initiative over a 12-month period.  Through these efforts we estimate that we will grow traffic to 2.5M visitors/mo and revenue to $480K/mo within 12 months.  With a significant overall increase in market demand expected over the next 2 years for value added online content, we believe that our targets are conservative.

We believe the state of the B2B marketplace over the next 2 years will be conducive to an exit strategy based on merger or acquisition.  Our current position in the market and our plans to solidify and expand that position will make theFinancials.com an attractive candidate for other B2B players looking for a quality entry point to the value-added online content market.

People

theFinancials.com was founded by Kurt Walter in early 1999 in South Florida.  Mr. Walter also serves as President of the company and is responsible for all day-to-day activities.  Mr. Walter’s previous experience includes 8 years at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, Washington, where he developed mission-critical applications for the company and supported customers developing applications with Microsoft’s tools.

For further information please contact Mr. Walter at KurtWalter@theFinancials.com or 843.886.3635.