Bobwins, YPNT, the reason I think the amortization will catch up in 1Q is because the are now consistently spending $3.1M to $3.2M to acquire new customers. You can see amortization slowly creeping up from $1.5M to $2.1M to $2.5M. I am assuming that spending will remain relatively flat at $3.1 to $3.2M, so once they are in the final quarter of spending that level, the amorization will approximately equal spending.
I think you might be insinuating that they will continue to increase sales & marketing dollars, so amortization will not catch up. I don't think that they will continue to ramp up dollars into acquisition, but we will see. I worry that if they attempt this strategy, it will result in a higher acquisition cost per new customer with longer paybacks and that they will either be targeting customers who turned them down before or are less desirable.
By the way, have you ever seen anything related to either churn or gross adds for YPNT? If we knew either the % of customers that left each month or the number of new gross adds each month, we could back into actual sales and marketing acquisition costs per new customer, which would allow for an estimate of NPV and months to payback per new customer. I did a similar analysis for CORG several months ago which was not enjoyed by the board but turned out to be pretty accurate as the stock as now tanked. I think a similar analysis for YPNT would be extremely favorable; however, I don't know if the monthly customer retention rate for YPNT is closer to 98% or 92%. Not sure if this is ever disclosed.
AI
