Jon Arnold's post is a MUST, MUST, MUST read if you are a VoIP investor.
Nothing that have I read on Vonage as a public company is a focused or as insightful.
I would love to see a James Enck laser look to see how close the two are in facts and insights.
Now to put the VoIPWatch microscope on all this the reasons for the continued Vonage follies, despite new, and corporate expertise falls on a handful of issues:
1. Customer Service or the lack of it.
2. Investor Relations Vonage has been absolutely horrible from day one at maintaining any kind of real effort to explain why they have to spend what they do to get the customers to subscribe. What's more they have been equally inarticulate at explaining their churn rates. This is an IR problem, not a marketing problem as a result. Now as Arnold pointed out they are giving some type of guidance via very forward looking statements about 2008.
3. Lack of innovation. Maybe with Louis Holder returning to the fold this will change. Reports are he's back and will play a key role.
4. Their marketing costs are not being cut. When I see offers like these, it means at a cost basis of $6.70 per line that roughly $100 a year it costs to maintain the customer. Now add $200 to that so Vonage starts out at $300 that have to make up. Now add in E911 costs and more and there's no way they make money on a customer who after a year bolts for a different carrier.
There are likely many more examples, but given the stock price, I don't like to kick a horse when it's down...so others like Jon have done that just fine :-)
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