Saying he is comfortable with Wall Street expectations that its US operations will turn profitable during 1998’s first quarter, Netcom On-Line Communication Services Inc’s chief executive, president and chairman David Garrison noted that that timeframe would be 13 quarters after the company went public. Netcom is the largest Internet access provider but has only just gone offshore, and now has operations in Canada, the UK and, as of this week, Brazil. Launching those operations required significant start-up costs – As you saw in our second quarter, global initiatives certainly do pressure margins, Garrison said, but as a large Internet service provider addressing business users, global expansion made good business sense because clients are multinational.
