News of Microsoft Venture Delivers for Stamps.com
Stamps.com received two major endorsements Monday--from Microsoft and from Wall Street--that sent its shares up more than 14%.
The Santa Monica company, one of the first to sell postage that can be downloaded from the Internet onto a personal computer and printed directly onto an envelope, announced a marketing partnership with Microsoft that will make its service available to millions of small-business owners. Stamps.com also said it would begin serving customers nationwide Sept. 27.
The news boosted Stamps.com’s stock price $4.38 to close at $35 in Nasdaq trading. The price has nearly tripled since the company first offered shares to the public in late June at $11 per share.
“There’s no question now that this product is coming to market in the very short term, and it is doing so with powerful partners in place,” said Derek Brown, a senior analyst with Volpe Brown Whelan in San Francisco. “Microsoft is just the latest example of that.”
In July, office-products retailer Office Depot agreed to offer Stamps.com’s service directly from its Web site, and MySoftware agreed to integrate Stamps.com’s service with its family of software products for direct marketing.
But Stamps.com rival E-Stamp of San Mateo is making deals of its own. Privately held E-Stamp and Microsoft will unveil a co-branded site within the popular Microsoft Office Update Web site today.
Both companies made postage history two weeks ago when the U.S. Postal Service approved their PC postage systems, the first innovation in postage since the postal meter was introduced in 1920. Both companies charge a convenience fee of about 10% for their services.
Jeff Green, Stamps.com’s vice president for marketing, would not say how long its partnership with Microsoft will last or how much it will pay the software giant.
