Quote:
Originally Posted by iamtam
actually, this was part of the problem of their original offerings. their costs to get new customers was more than $120 if i remember correctly, and the income on a clients lifetime with them was around $100. so just on operations they were negative before paying for their debt, at least based on what i remember in one of their filings.
if you only gain about $100 a member but you are running $200 per signup marketing programs, you are likely to have a deficit.
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If only it were that simple. I am sure on some of their joins it may be like that, but I doubt every single join they get costs them $100 per member, after all they are an insane brand with an insane member base - surely some people just remember who they are and signup to buy with an acquisition cost of $0. Also, in their last quarterly they actively discussed dropping media buys that were non-performing...
You all underestimate Marc Bell. The truth is, there's a reason he has millions and you are on GFY applying the assumption of one rudimentary statement or application you read to his whole business model as if this is 100% truth in reality.
I was doing some research for fun last night. As recently as Sept 14, Marc has actually been a buyer in his own stock of FFN at $2.75. Granted it was only 10,000 shares. What I found really interesting is him and soem of the other FFN guys are involved heavily in a REIT called ARR (
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=arr). This thing pays off a monthly dividend that yields 19-20% !!! Considering the gov't has just stated interest rates will remain low for quite some time, I'd say that might be a pretty interesting and quality buy to a shareholder, although I do need to look at it some more.