DealTime looking to expand to Europe and Asia
By Buzzy Gordon

From The Jerusalem Post

JERUSALEM, April 3, 2000
Internet on-line comparison shopping service DealTime is gearing up for rapid expansion ahead of a planned initial public offering on Nasdaq, president and CEO Daniel Ciporin told The Jerusalem Post. Ciporin, who is based in New York, said that the upcoming expansion into Europe and Asia would lead to the creation of more jobs at the company's Netanya facility, where 110 staffers, are currently employed, up from only eight a year ago.

According to Ciporin, DealTime intends to increase the number of workers here and in its 70-person headquarters in New York. The money for this rapid expansion comes from a $52 million private placement in which multi-national corporate giants, such as America Online and Time Warner, participated. Two weeks ago, DealTime submitted a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Authority for an IPO. When asked why an IPO is following hard on the heels of such a successful private placement, Ciporin would only comment that "IPO's are about a lot more than money."

Ciporin did go to some lengths to dispute a recent report in the Israeli press that revealed a valuation of $200 million-$225m. at the time of February's round of financing, up sharply from an estimated $60m. last August.

"The facts in that story are wrong," said Ciporin "We are certainly not in need of more cash now. We did not spend $52 million in five weeks." Ciporin did reveal, however, that DealTime has budgeted $25m. for advertising and promotions on an annualized basis.

More money will be spent on launching DealTime in Germany, where the company's debut was announced last week. DealTime will also commence operations in Japan this year, and Japanese nationals are hard at work in Netanya. Currently, DealTime is active in the US and the UK, with France also targeted for the near future.

"By all objective metric accounts, DealTime is the world's leading on-line comparison shopping Web site, with 3.1 million unique hits in February alone," Ciporin said. "In fact, PC Data ranks DealTime as the 122nd most popular Internet Web site in the world in all categories."

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