CheckFree losses widen
Online banking service provider CheckFree announces widening second-quarter losses as it closed yet another acquisition deal.
CheckFree, a PC and Web-based home-banking processing provider, reported a net loss of $5.3 million, or 13 cents a share, for the quarter ending December 31, compared with a loss of $123,000, or break-even, a year earlier.
Wall Street had expected the company to report a loss of 13 cents a share, according to First Call.
Revenues for the quarter reached $38.5 million, nearly a three-fold increase from a year ago.
CheckFree, which is also a major supplier of bill-paying and other services to banks, businesses, and consumers, announced that it had closed a deal to acquire Intuit Services, the electronic banking services subsidiary of Intuit (INTU).
Under the agreement, CheckFree gave Intuit 12.6 million shares of its stock for the subsidiary.
CheckFree earlier this month teamed up with Intuit and Microsoft to develop a technical protocol that would enable financial institutions to exchange financial information over the Internet.
And late last year, the company signed contracts to provide home banking and bill-payment processing services with 165 financial institutions.