Bills.com Domain Name and Trademarks Sold for $964,500
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San Antonio, Texas - (The Hosting News) - November 16, 2005 - The domain name and trademark of bills.com has been sold for $964,500 and other considerations. Payment Data Systems, Inc., an integrated electronic payments solutions provider, today announced that it has signed a Letter of Intent to sell the domain to Alivio Holdings, LLC (Alivio), parent of Freedom Financial Network, LLC (FFN), Freedom Debt Relief, LLC (FDR) and Freedom Tax Relief, LLC (FTR) of San Mateo, California.
The intended asset sale has a number of key and important strategic elements to it:
-- PDS will sell the assets (domain and trademarks) of bills.com and
related services to Alivio for $964,500 dollars.
-- PDS will retain all assets of bills.com exclusive of the bills.com
domain and bills.com trademark and gain new revenue.
-- PDS and FFN will agree that PDS build and run a private labeled bill
payment site for FFN.
-- FFN will pay to PDS, a recurring fee for each subscriber they acquire
into the new bills.com program, and guarantee $72,000 in minimum subscriber
fees to PDS.
-- FTR, a wholly owned affiliate of Alivio Holdings, LLC, will engage PDS
for additional services not directly related to the bills.com transaction.
This includes ACH processing, Returned Check processing, and credit card
processing.
-- FFN will commit a minimum of $180,000 to be applied to marketing bill
payment services for the new bills.com website.
-- FFN is projecting that the FFN bills.com website, powered by
billx.com, could have over 5,000 subscribers within the next twelve months.
This projected growth will generate over $25,000 a month in additional
subscriber revenue for PDS.
Additional and important aspects of the transaction:
-- PDS will rename our subsidiary Bills.com, Inc. to Billx.com, Inc. or
similar name.
-- All existing customers of the current bills.com service will be ported
to the new billx.com domain without service interruption.
-- PDS, through billx.com, will not lose any existing revenue as a result
of this transaction. In fact, servicing the new FFN bills.com website will
bring in new revenue.
The anticipated effects of the agreement and the associated follow on transactions are:
-- The transaction and related agreements should be accretive
to earnings for PDS over the term of the agreements.
-- Positions us for positive EBITDA (earnings before interest,
taxes, depreciation and amortization) and net income in the
fourth quarter of 2005 and eliminates our debt.
-- Positions billx.com to accomplish a number of existing and new
initiatives:
-- Expands and enhances our ability to acquire and deliver
private labeled sites for banks, debit card issuers, and
credit unions quickly and efficiently. A differentiating
and valuable component of our solution allows these private
labels sites to be operated as payment consolidators for all
bills not just their own bills.
-- Enhances our ability to expand delivery of bill payment,
account transfers, and debit card loading and bill payment
into new PDS clients that have customer-facing needs in the
debt management industry.
''We are very pleased with this event,'' stated Michael Long, Chairman and CEO of PDS. ''Clearly the agreements when fully executed validate the viability of our strategy of private labeling and create a cash position that significantly changes our financial profile and opens up new opportunities for PDS. We expect these agreements to be completed within the current week.''
Andrew Housser, Co-CEO of Alivio and Freedom Financial Network, added, ''We are very excited about the acquisition of bills.com and see this as a key step in enhancing our brand and profile in the consumer debt management industry. In addition we look forward to entering the fast growing bill payment space by partnering with one of the leading players in the industry.''