LAKE OSWEGO, Ore., July 10, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- ICM Telecommunications, Inc. (Pink Sheets:ICMH), which offers prepaid pin-based products through its Point of Sales Activation (POSA) terminals, today announced that the company has recently added eight additional representatives to its sales and marketing team. With the new staff in place, sales and installations have accelerated, and in the past five weeks the company has experienced a 30% increase in revenues.
Concurrently, the number of grocery and convenience stores now featuring the company's Electronic Payment & Inventory System (EPIS) has grown to 85, primarily in the Seattle/Tacoma and metropolitan Portland, Oregon markets. The company anticipates additional sales coverage extending to the northern and central regions of California in the next several months.
The company's EPIS hardware and software package enables the retailer to process a suite of services, all on the same terminal. Current products available for purchase include prepaid cellular telephone recharge, telephone calling cards, home dial tone, roadside assistance and discounted prescription drug cards. The EPIS system also offers merchant services such as MasterCard transactions.
Demand has been especially strong for the company's telephone calling cards, which offer rates of 3.5 cents per minute domestically, and 10 cents per minute via the company's popular Pachanga card focused on the Mexican calling card market.
The roadside assistance card, which retails at $9.95, and is good for 30 days from issuance, features free towing to the nearest garage, refills of fluids such as water and gas, free lockout assistance and free fixing of flat tires. In addition, purchasers receive a calling card good for 225 minutes in the U.S. and 60 minutes to Mexico.
The prepaid prescription card, retailing at $9.95 and good for 60 days from issuance, offers consumers a 30% discount on all prescription drugs and is honored at all major pharmacies such as Long's and Rite Aid.
"ICM intends to treat prepaid products in a long-term fashion for its market segment," said President & CEO Doug Hamby. "We initially will focus on customers who are credit challenged, have low incomes, and do not have bank accounts. In addition, we will make our POSA terminals more available to merchants by making them virtually cost free to install and maintain, relieving the storeowner of the need to own special equipment to provide these services."
Hamby noted that industry analysts now believe that within two years, by 2005, the overall market for prepaid products will climb to as much as $4- $5 billion. The CEO said that ICM believes that, with its current suite of prepaid products, and those now in development, that the company could conceivably capture as much as 1% of that market by that time, and grow aggressively thereafter with continuing new services being introduced to this dynamic marketplace.
"In fact," said Hamby, "we anticipate making a major addition to this growing array of well accepted prepaid products, and to announce this new product within the next week."
Statements contained in this release, which are not historical facts, may be considered "forward-looking statements" under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and the current economic environment. We caution the reader that such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. Unknown risk, uncertainties as well as other uncontrollable or unknown factors could cause actual results to materially differ from the results, performance, or expectations expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.