+++ AdultShop - ASIC Untersuchung +++ Kurs faellt in Oz unter 10c - 500 Beiträge pro Seite

[IchLachMichTodHier]

ASIC Inquiry
17-09 1219


The ASIC has served a notice to the Company under section 30 of the
ASIC Act 2001 for the production of various Company records,
including accounting records dealing with the Company`s actual
operating performance, budgets, forecasts and projections for the
period from 1 July 2001 to date.

The Company`s management and directors are cooperating fully with
ASIC in this regard.

ASIC has advised that the notice should not be construed as any
indication that a contravention of the law has occurred.

K J Heitman
CHAIRMAN

[speedy001]

lämmer, morgen unter 0,05 euro.

[kappi1]

Ich mag keine DUMMEN (Weltmeister aller Klassen) Meschen und hier im Board sind es nicht wenige!
gruss Kappi

[IchLachMichTodHier]

Willkommen in Club Kappi1

ILMTH

[Moneymaker63]

kappi1 und speedy001 hört sich ziemlich gleich an,
hey speedy001 hast Du dir etwa einen neuen Namen zugelegt
um uns noch mehr blöd voll zu tecksten?

[IchLachMichTotHier]

AUS ADULTSHP.COM WIRD JETZT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!





WWW.KNASTSHOP.COM

[DocDebil]

Ach was, jetzt geht`s erst richtig los:





Die Party fängt erst an!
Mit 22% Rabatt, na ja - die haben wir ja schon längst bei den Aktien...

[IchLachMichTodHier]

AdultShop kommt nicht zur Ruhe - heute bereits unter 9c in Australien. Zwei vernichtende Artikel in der AFR und SMH

Porn king`s tangled web
Sep 18
Katrina Nicholas


Malcolm Day spends his time, as callers to AdultShop.com are told while they are on hold, running a company where it`s a "business doing pleasure with the world".

But investors in the company are learning that Day, AdultShop.com`s founder and chief executive, may have been mixing a little too much business with pleasure.

Adultshop.com, the online porn merchant, revealed late last week that it had paid $1.6million to B Mad Online, an internet marketing company owned by Day`s de facto partner, Bree Maddox.

B Mad Online directed internet traffic to porn sites owned by Today`s Success, a division of AdultShop.com. Since last year, when AdultShop.com pulled much of its magazine, bus and billboard advertising, paying other adult entertainment sites to direct traffic to its sites has been a major way of attracting customers.

Although AdultShop.com has since terminated its marketing agreement with B Mad Online, questions over the transaction remain. The relationship between Maddox and Day means it is a related-party transaction which arguably should have been disclosed immediately.

According to a statement by AdultShop.com, payments to B Mad Online began in December last year. Documents lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, however, show B Mad Online was only established on March 27 this year.

Just how many other companies` sites B Mad Online directed traffic to is also an issue, as it was less than six months old.

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Maddox, who is better known as the 2000 Penthouse Pet of the Year than for her business prowess, declined to discuss B Mad Online or its dealings with AdultShop.com.

"I`d rather not say anything," she said. "Mal and I have already been crucified by the media for doing nothing."

But the related-party transaction between Day and Maddox is not the only AdultShop.com revelation to raise eyebrows.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has served notice on AdultShop.com to produce accounting records dealing with actual operating performance, budgets, forecasts and projections for the period starting July 1, 2001.

As well as trying to get to the bottom of AdultShop.com`s relationship with B Mad Online, ASIC is also investigating reasons behind the company`s earnings bombshell, dropped days before the B Mad Online revelation.


ASIC is understood to be examining AdultShop.com`s level of disclosure to the market and whether it knew earlier than September 2 that its forecast of an $11.6 million net profit for the six months to December 31, 2002, would actually be a net loss.

It is also believed to be wondering why AdultShop.com didn`t know earlier that cash reserves at the end of this calendar year would be between $10 million and $12 million, not the $30 million-plus predicted in May, when the company - fresh from reporting a maiden $272,000 profit for the six months to December 31, 2001 - told shareholders that revenue for the 2002 financial year would be more than $118 million and revenue for the first half of this financial year would be about $106 million. It also said net profit for the 2002 financial year would be about $5.6 million.

While forecasts for 2002 proved largely correct (revenue was $117.3 million and net profit $5.7 million), problems associated with Today`s Success, AdultShop.com`s main moneyspinner, mean that the 2003 numbers will fall well short of projections.


Malcolm Day, a one-time Cleo Bachelor of the Year contender, has also refused to talk publicly about ASIC`s probe. But in a recent interview with The Australian Financial Review, he was resolutely upbeat about the company`s prospects: "The company is growing its online erotic entertainment membership database as quickly as possible through various marketing strategies and initiatives and through new affiliate marketing programs," he said .

Meanwhile, his reputation is being rapidly tarnished. High-profile stockbroker Rene Rivkin, in a recent edition of his regular investor newsletter, related the story of his meeting with Day some months ago.


"He gave me all sorts of statistics and figures which indicated the stock was a steal," Rivkin wrote. "He asked me if I was going to write it up and I reserved my judgement at the time."

Days later, Rivkin noticed comments on internet chatroom sites saying that he was about to write up AdultShop.com as an outstanding buy. Given that the meeting with Day had been held in private, Rivkin decided "that I wasn`t going to recommend the stock because I felt that the sole purpose of this visit to me was to get me to write it up". He wrote that he was relieved he had not recommended the stock.

"I am, of course, not accusing him of lying but I can accuse him of not knowing his business as well as he ought to," said Rivkin, concluding that now he would not touch AdultShop.com with a 10-foot bargepole.


Since AdultShop.com`s problems were exposed last fortnight, Day has gone to ground, giving only two interviews, and even then insisting all questions be general in nature and emailed to him hours in advance.

AdultShop.com`s other directors have been similarly mute. Emails to Reg Gillard, who resigned as chairman on Friday, were not returned, while new non-executive chair Kim Heitman said last week he felt "constrained because of the inquiries".


Specifically, Day seems reluctant to discuss what is apparently the root of AdultShop.com`s problems - its credit card billing and credit card validation systems.

A large part of AdultShop.com`s business comes from its online erotic entertainment business, Today`s Success. In fact, Today`s Success, which was acquired in June 2001, was the main contributor to AdultShop.com`s growth last financial year.


Through Today`s Success, via a large number of separately branded websites, users can watch pornographic video clips online. Viewers pay by credit card before being allowed access to the digital clips.


Previously, AdultShop.com had handled all its credit card validation requirements for this service in-house. It operated its own credit card billing solution through merchant accounts with international banks and conducted credit card validation internally, with some assistance from external parties.


Fees were charged to members` credit cards in accordance with the membership terms and conditions, and then credited to AdultShop.com`s merchant accounts with international banks. Those then processed the transactions and deposited the funds into AdultShop.com`s Australian bank accounts on a periodical basis.


AdultShop.com recognised revenue, and booked provisions for refunds and rejected transactions when the money went into its merchant accounts.


A large growth in the Today`s Success membership base, however, led AdultShop.com last month to outsource its billing requirements. It says one reason behind the decision to outsource was that levies for rejected transactions were getting too high. It is also understood costs associated with the validation of credit cards were increasing.

What AdultShop.com didn`t expect was that outsourcing would cull membership numbers drastically. In a statement, it said: "The more stringent membership validation process, which is part of the new billing solution, substantially reduced the membership database."

The reduction is said to be as high as 60 per cent, meaning member numbers went from about 287,500 to 115,000.


According to Day, a number of those not accepted due to the more stringent credit card validation process were long-standing members. "We are now working to reactivate these people," he said last week.


A statement by the company also said that, in a number of instances, rejections occurred because of inconsistencies in one of a wide range of data fields used by the third-party provider for the validation process.


Although AdultShop.com has refused to disclose exactly why more than half of its members were deemed financially unsuitable, industry sources say questionable credit cards and fraudulent transactions are rife in the online adult services industry.

According to statistics from Visa USA, online credit card fraud ran at a rate of about 9 per cent last year. While that figure includes all sorts of internet transactions, Bahram Boutorabi, managing director of G Payments, one of Australia`s larger payment gateways, says adult content online naturally attracts higher charge-back rates.


Charge-backs occur when a card holder disputes a transaction. In the online world, the onus in such cases falls on the merchant to foot the cost of the disputed sale, rather than the issuing or acquiring bank.


"The industry is prone to the `I didn`t do it` transaction," Boutorabi says. "A lot of people don`t like to be recognised [when ordering online porn] and so it`s easier to either use a credit card that`s not yours, or a credit card number that has been generated randomly."




Charge-backs could also possibly be the reason for another problem plaguing AdultShop.com - the withholding of $US1million ($1.82 million) by one of its former credit card processors.


Industry sources suggest AdultShop.com`s acquiring bank may be withholding payment due to some of AdultShop.com`s customers disputing transactions, and therefore not authorising payments to their issuing banks.


Keen no doubt to avoid any further cash flow hurdles, AdultShop.com says, in its most recent statement to the ASX, that it has, since last Thursday, reviewed the recoverability of its $10 million or so in receivables as at June 30.

"The company confirms that 90 per cent of these receivables have been recovered since the balance date and the balance is expected to be received in the normal course of business."

Day, however, is adamant that credit card payment problems plague all etailers.

"The fact is, merchants selling goods and services over the internet face greater challenges and higher costs managing transactions than their point-of-sale counterparts," he says.



Although selling erotic entertainment online is a relatively minor part of fellow adult etailer Gallery Global Networks` business, its chief executive, Chris Thorpe, says there is "always going to be some bad debt".




Thorpe says Gallery Global uses a number of methods to verify credit card users. They include cross-checking addresses entered on the website with addresses in the telephone directory and getting credit card holders to enter the three-digit code on the back of their credit card, hence ensuring the user at least has a physical card in his or her possession.

Day has declined to comment on verification methods used by AdultShop.com.



The wall of silence that has been erected around AdultShop.com of late means those members who have been dumped from the database must wait until the company sorts out its credit card validation system. And until that happens, investors will be tempted to continue shunning the stock.

[speedy001]

und ein schönes - in australien,kauft weiter lämmer zu 0,058 und 0,06 .

[speedy001]

ja heute fallen die 0,05