future of ClickRewards?
 

ClickRewards parent company Netcentive's stock is getting hammered. Downgraded last week by Credit Suisse analysts, and fell below 52 week low yesterday. The stock is down about 12% this morning and trading below previous 52 week low. I know this isn't an investment msg board but I have about 145,000 Click Miles sitting with them. Should I get em out? Anyone else worried about their ClickMiles or the future of this program? Personally, I haven't had any activity in my ClickRewards account for about 2 months now (since Compubank ditched em).

voluntary disclosure: I don't own NCNT stock. The only thing I have at stake are my miles.

[This message has been edited by custombagel (edited 03-22-2001).]

It's very likely, IMHO, that there will soon be some changes - and they will NOT be positive! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/eek.gif

I only had about 66,000 points in click rewards but just to be safe I moved them all over to Starwood. It only took one week to post to my Starwood acct..

From Starwood you can convert them in to most major airline mile programs with out loosing any points/miles.

I have not looked into it yet but I think you also get an extra 5,000 miles for each block of 20,000 you convert out of Starwood.



[This message has been edited by liptont (edited 03-22-2001).]

Custombagel--I think it would be very wise to move your miles out NOW! While I am a great fan of Clickrewards and netcentives, they are suffering from the same hammering all of the net stocks are going through. Whether they can survive is unknown. (Same disclosure, I owned some Netcentives stock for a while, made a profit while it was going up, but sold it last year before it plunged.) That said, I would probably move the whole thing over to Starwood, to take advantage of the 20,000/25,000 air miles option, and retain the flexibility of moving to whatever program you need the miles in for the future.

Djlawman

Mypoints, (mypt) is not looking that good either. It has been under a dollar for a few weeks now and seems to have less point earning opportunities. I would think about getting your points out of there too. (I don't own My Points stock.

Good luck to all of us.

Netcentives stock dropped another 25% this afternoon (new 52 week low). I moved all my ClickMiles to Starwood (thanks for the tip!). I think Netcentives is providing the backend technology for AOL AAdvantage. Wonder what will happen to that program if Netcentives goes bankruptcy..? Think AMR/AOL's concerned ?

I moved my points out. I never got miles I was due from one of their sub companies, the one that runs the DL Shopping Web Site. Better to be safe then sorry, and you have A LOT OF MILES TO PROTECT.

Ditto. Shifted mine to SPG earlier this week.

Better to be safe. Moved mine to Starwood also.

10k ClickRewards for opening a Cititrade account with a mere $10k http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif
http://www.clickrewards.com/offers/cititrade.html

* This offer is available to all Cititrade accounts, except for retirement accounts. Citigroup employees are not eligible for this offer. Only one Cititrade account per household is eligible to receive this award. This offer cannot be used in conjunction with other Cititrade promotional offers to obtain multiple awards. To receive the award, the client must deposit $10,000 into a Cititrade account. He/she must maintain such amount in the account through the time period the credit will be made and execute at least one equity, option, or mutual fund trade (excluding money market funds) during such time period. The client's award will be credited to his/her ClickRewards account within 8 weeks of opening and funding the account. This offer may be terminated or changed at any time and for any reason without notice.

Thanks for the tip. I transferred mine to my USAir Dividend Miles account.

Just got off the phone with a rep at Cititrade. You can fund the new account one of two ways: send $10k or transfer $10k of securities from another investment company.

you still have to make one trade at a high $29.95.

.....THUS, IT'S LIKE PAYING $29.95 FOR 10K MILES. Not bad.......better than the $50 AA CC 10k mile promo going on (albeit more of a hassle)

Thanks for posting this, custombagel. I just now transferred my miles into Starwood...just to be on the safe side.

Wouldn't you have to pay the $29.95 twice, once to buy the stock and once to sell it, or am I missing something?

I'm new to this site and I haven't heard about the $50 AA 10K promo. Can someone give me info about it?

Thanks

I could not find an option for transferring points to Starood. Would anyone be able to tell me where to find it, or provide a link? Also, what is the minimum points that can be transferred?
Thanks,
dc

For Starwood redemption copy and paste the following:

https://www.clickrewards.com/info/CRequestHandlerServlet?request=CRewardMoreInfo&Nav Id=6804&style=clickrewards

[This message has been edited by letiole (edited 03-24-2001).]

A word of caution here. I spent about 20 minutes filling out application on line and then came to the following message below when I had completed the form. I don't plan to have this as my main brokerage account and I don't plan to keep $20k in the account, so $25 per quarter is a very steep fee.

"Sign up for CitiOne sm now. We'll waive the $25 quarterly fee if you maintain a balance of $20,000 or when you make just 4 qualified trades. Just select any of the features below to gain access to the greater financial management CitiOne offers."

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/2001...ives_dc_1.html

From the San Francisco Chronicle on 4/3/2001:

Online marketer Netcentives said yesterday that it will cut 120 jobs in an effort to reduce costs. The San Francisco company, which will have 380 employees after the cut, also disclosed that West Shell will resign as chief executive and be replaced by Eric Larsen, the firm's president.

Yes, it's been a very, very rough ride for this company. 75 cents a share is too cruel considering they were at one point very close to $100 per share. Will they make it? I truly believe they will, though probably not as an independent company. I think they are a current takeover target and just today loaded up on a bunch of new shares at .75 cents. Now, I've had my share of stock losses, so don't follow me to E*Trade to earn miles and more, but i think time will tell that something has to happen pretty soon. Because of their asset base it's unlikely they face delisting, but if only they get back to $1.50 i will have doubled my money and I will be very happy by then. As for the inventory of mileage balance. I, like others have plenty in there, some 175,000 ClickMiles (as a point of trivia, do you know that they acquired that trademark (ClickMiles) from me? Yep, I owned it at one time for use on WebFlyer). But because of the airline equity in the company, I think I'm protected and am not ready just yet to commit on how i like my miles. I view them like Membership Rewards and like the flexibility - so I'm holding them because as of yet, I don't think I need to fold them.

P.S. a note to the executives of Netcentives - please don't embarass me in front of my fellow flyers, please keep this company solvent.

Great comments Randy!

I actually like ClickRewards to stick around as well. The key here is to think about how they work. I don't know for sure, but the way I see it...they collect revenue when you are credited with ClickMiles. Their biggest outflow of cash is going to come when you actually redeem your ClickMiles. It seems unlikely to me that they would invest in a large inventory of rewards and require an extensive warehouse and inventory control.

So, if all of us that have large amounts of ClickMiles in the company leave them in, maybe we will end up doing our part to insure their survival during this difficult time.

On another note, consider that the elimination of jobs by a company is not necessarily bad news. If they eliminate some expenses without hindering the quality of their business, it actually means a greater chance of survival and a road to profit.

Adam

What is the symbol?

Netcentives is really a great company. I hope Randy's words become true because like this fantastic home for the frequent traveller, ClickRewards.com certainly has their place, as well. They have earned the right to be successful.

ANR:
You're right, the biggest liability ClickRewards has is their outstanding ClickMiles. In a February interview on On24.com, the former CEO West Shell said that they have 4 billion plus ClickMiles in member accounts. If even 50% of these are redeemed for airline miles this year, at 2 cents a mile, they will need about $40 million. The current market cap is a little less than $30 million. Do the math.

You're right: the elimination of jobs by a company is not necessarily evil. However, it makes you wonder why they hired all those useless hands in the first place. Most investors believe that West Shell was an incompetant and arrogant CEO who had no management skills. Check out this message from a disgruntled former Netcentives employee:
http://messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN...29537&mid=3399

It pretty much sums up how things were run in the organization. I agree, ClickRewards is a great service and deserves to stick around. Hope they get their act together under new management. EIther way, don't expect stock price to recover to $1.50 anytime soon...unless they have some earth shattering news before April 24 (FQ2001 results).

Maybe partly (though likely not wholly) because they just acquired some other companies, and there is typically overlap that forces layoffs in many such acquisitions ...

"...I view them like Membership Rewards and like the flexibility..."

Randy, with all due respect perhaps you'll permit me a minor clarification. While seeing the point in your analogy, the flexibility of "Clickmiles" IS very much like "Amex's MRs", I believe it is almost a real insult to "Clickmiles" to mention MR in the same breadth, since the customer service at "Clickmiles" is so VERY superior, while at "Amex MR's", it is truly but sadly NONexistent! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/eek.gif

A family member, after my proding, went to PlanetRx to make a purchase to asuure qualifying for the easy 10K NWA Fly Free Faster bonus and they were just wonderful in cleaning up the PlanetRx mess- as they seemingly always are! Amex MR appears to me to just permit the problems to "fester."

Go Clickrewards, not MR's, IMHO! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Beckles: Their last aquisition was UVN Holdings in March 2000, which gave them the whole of last year to reduce overlap if they wanted to.