OzEmail Ltd, Australia’s largest internet service provider, is stepping up its already-significant drive into the internet telephony market. Financial results for 1997 released last week, reveal fourth quarter operating expenditures of $3.7m for the Nasdaq-listed company’s Interline telephony unit. This compares to the previous quarter’s outlay of $1.3m. Interline was set up last July to develop a global internet telephony network. Shareholders are OzEmail with 48%, Euro retailer Metro Holding AG,40% and Melbourne telecommunications equipment manufacturer Ideata P/L with 12%. R&D and administrative costs at Interline increased in the quarter as we ramped up our development efforts by adding engineers, general management and a business development team, said Sean Howard, OzEmail’s chief executive. Earlier this week, Cisco Systems Inc announced an alliance with OzEmail for the development of internet telephony gateways. Our long-term growth strategy is built on being a ‘service provider to service providers’ and this type of development agreement is critical to that success, said Howard. Fourth quarter losses associated with Interline investment, the acquisition of rival ISP Access One and other one-off costs totalled $5.9m. Despite this, OzEmail posted record revenues of $66.4m for 1997, up 139% on $27.7m in 1996. Net income for 1997 was $2.9m, against $434,000 in 1996. OzEmail directors also announced a fully franked dividend of $0.025 per share.
