VIA NET.WORKS Announces 2004 Strategy for Recently Acquired Business Hosting Company, Amen
22 April 2004
AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands, April 22 -- VIA NET.WORKS, Inc. (Nasdaq: VNWI; EASE), a leading provider of business communications services for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe and the US, today announced that:
* Dick Theunissen has been appointed President of Amen; and,
* Amen will become VIA's Linux based hosting platform and brand across Europe.
In his new role, Mr. Theunissen, an officer of VIA NET.WORKS, Inc., will work closely with the original founders of Amen to continue the success of the existing Amen business and also coordinate VIA's roll-out in 2004 to 2005 of the Amen platform and brand to both the existing VIA operations and new geographic locations.
In commenting on these announcements, Rhett Williams, VIA's Chief Executive Officer said, "We are delighted with the strong results in Amen's existing operations in France, United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy. Both financially and operationally, the company continues to meet our high expectations. Amen's revenues continue to grow strongly since the acquisition and the group continues to generate positive cash flows. We expect these trends to continue."
Mr. Williams continued, "We expect that with Dick's past operating experience in France, combined with his ongoing leadership role in VIA, he can lead the Amen team to generating better than expected returns from our investment. Between Amen and VIA, we now manage approximately 250,000 domains, which clearly puts us on the map of top European hosting companies. Our objective is to become a recognised leader in the web hosting space in our chosen markets and we believe we have the people and the technology in place to make that happen over the coming year."
In commenting on the platform and brand roll-out, Mr. Theunissen stated, "We plan to roll out the Amen hosting platform to Portugal, The Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland before the end of the year, which will allow us to use this fully-automated and scaleable end-to-end operating platform for all new shared hosting customers in these territories. In addition, we will migrate all of VIA's existing Linux shared hosting customers onto Amen's platform over the next 12 months. We expect to achieve significant cost savings from this migration and from the use of the Amen platform for new customers. Finally, we also are seeking to enter new geographies with Amen services toward the end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005."
About VIA NET.WORKS, Inc.
VIA NET.WORKS, Inc. (Nasdaq: VNWI; Euronext) is a leading provider of business communication solutions to small and medium-sized businesses in Europe and the United States. The Group serves over 200,000 businesses across Europe with a comprehensive portfolio of business communications products includes hosting, security, connectivity, networks and voice. In January 2004 VIA acquired the European web-hosting company, Amen -- http://www.amenworld.com. Website: http://www.vianetworks.com
