Cybersurf Corp. suitor Globel Direct Inc. is on the acquisition warpath and, following a meeting Monday with their intended target’s board of directors, Globel officials say their takeover bid is only part of their company’s move into a national leadership role in direct marketing services.
“It’s not like we’re just looking at Cybersurf,” said Patrick McFall, vice-president of Ideas and New Media for Globel.
“We probably have four to six acquisitions that are in the plan that we’re figuring out how they’d fit.”
Globel had set today as a deadline for a reply from Cybersurf, Canada’s second most popular Internet service provider, to its offer of a combination of cash and shares, but met with the Cybersurf board to present their proposal Monday afternoon.
“There were good discussions and the presentation was well received,” said McFall. The Cybersurf board was thinking about the offer.
If the bid is rejected, said McFall, “we move into a hostile environment. “We know the dissidents hold a lot of shares, and they’re not happy . . . And we know the management of the company owns a lot of the shares.
“It’s the people in the middle that we would have to take our story to.”
Cybersurf won a proxy showdown last month with a dissident group of shareholders who blamed the company’s poor financial performance on Cybersurf’s 3Web, Canada’s largest free Internet and e-mail service.
The company reported a loss of $8.6 million (34 cents a share) in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2000, compared with a profit of $154,000, or one cent a share, a year earlier.
“We believe if the people in control truly want to make it a successful company over the long haul, they’ll listen to our story,” said McFall.
“If they’re interested in developing the technology that they’re currently developing, and looking for the home-run hit, then they may not listen to us.”
McFall believes Cybersurf would “significantly jumpstart” Globel’s business, which blends traditional paper-based direct mail marketing with a wider e-commerce presence.
“They are truly a high-tech Internet communications company,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with the business we’re in. We just want to be in their business as well.
“It is the future of our industry,” McFall said. “Not to say the traditional methods won’t be around later, but (the Internet) is where the high-growth potential, high-margin business is.”
Globel also recently acquired Calgary-based INet Communications Inc., a company which has developed an e-learning technology that enables organizations to provide professional development training to employees online.
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