CCBN Introduces Event Briefs, An Important New Information Service in the Wake of Regulation Fair Disclosure.

Business/Technology Editors

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 25, 2002

Event Briefs Conference Call Summaries Help Institutional Investors

Manage Information Overload During Earnings Season

CCBN (www.ccbn.com), the leading provider of Internet-based shareholder communications services, today announced the availability of Event Briefs(SM), a revolutionary tool created to help members of the investment community effectively manage the surplus of financial information they receive as a result of Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD). Event Briefs feature unbiased, straightforward summaries of corporate conference calls and include a factual synopsis of the key data points, financial review and outlook, call duration and participants, and the critical question and answer session. Officially launched this quarter, CCBN has already received an overwhelming response from investors for Event Briefs, signing on more than 200 firms in less than two months.

CCBN provides Event Briefs for earnings calls, guidance calls between reporting periods, M&A and product announcements, as well as "breaking news" calls. The Briefs are typically available within hours after the conference call ends, in some cases even before the replay is ready via dial-in or webcast. At this time, Event Briefs are available exclusively on the CCBN StreetEvents site (www.streetevents.com) for institutional investors and through the MyCCBN(SM) service (my.ccbn.com), CCBN's online resource for corporations.

"Having a summary like this is great, particularly when earnings season gets busy," said Daren Marhula, senior research analyst, U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray. "There are a lot of calls I don't have time to listen to and getting a quick summary, like Event Briefs provide, is very helpful."

Event Briefs are a natural outgrowth of Regulation FD and the new responsibilities placed on the investor relations (IR) and the institutional investment communities. Conference calls are more important than ever because they have become the primary means for companies to communicate with investors. Since the introduction of Regulation FD just over a year ago, there has been an explosion in the number of calls companies are webcasting, and at the same time, these calls are lasting longer and frequently overlap. As a result, institutional investors are often overwhelmed with information, causing them to miss conference calls and potentially material data on which to base their investment analysis.

"There was a clear need in the marketplace for a way to better manage an ever-increasing amount of earnings-related information," said Jeffrey Parker, co-founder and CEO of CCBN. "CCBN was challenged to develop a solution that would facilitate not only the efficient dissemination, but also the digestion of this information, thereby making the information itself more valuable."

Beta tested in Q4 2001, CCBN actively engaged both public companies and Wall Street institutions in the development of Event Briefs. Buy-side users have already cited several benefits of using Event Briefs, stating that the product:

-- Saves time by allowing investors, who are literally bombarded by information, to focus on the key points of the call and even to decide whether or not to listen to the entire webcast.

-- Promotes efficiency by enabling investors to review the highlights of several calls when evaluating new companies to cover.

-- Supplies unbiased reporting with its straightforward reporting of the call that is not subject to interpretation. This feature has been particularly helpful to many buy-side analysts.

Event Briefs can play an important role in helping companies present their message to the institutional investment community, reducing the possibility of misinterpretation of conference call content, keeping investors informed about their company and attracting more potential investors. In addition, companies can take advantage of Event Briefs as a research tool themselves, reading summaries of their peer's calls.

"It's incredibly convenient to have a printable recap available so shortly after a call ends," said Carolynne Borders, investor relations director, Standard Microsystems Corporation. "I have saved so much time, because with Event Briefs, I no longer have to transcribe the key parts of conference calls for our competitors and peers."

CCBN currently provides Briefs on the companies most popular among its StreetEvents subscribers - mainly the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100. In the second quarter of 2002, CCBN will also provide Event Briefs for the top 300 companies on the Russell 2000 index. TSE 100 coverage will follow shortly thereafter. CCBN also plans to supply coverage based on requests from both the institutional subscribers and the public companies themselves.

"We've received calls from many smaller market cap companies looking for increased exposure to the institutional market, asking us to write Briefs for their calls," said Rob Adler, co-founder and president, CCBN. "These companies recognize that Event Briefs greatly improve their chances of having investors take an interest in their company's story, especially if they currently are not widely followed in the marketplace."

About CCBN

Co-founded in 1997 by Jeffrey P. Parker, creator of First Call, and Robert Adler, CCBN is the global leader in enabling direct communications between public companies and the investment community over the Internet. CCBN builds, manages and hosts the investor relations sections of Web sites for more than 2,500 public companies, providing detailed shareholder information through interactive, multimedia solutions. In addition, CCBN hosts live and archived quarterly conference calls for more than 3,000 corporations each quarter. Through its StreetEvents institutional event management database (www.streetevents.com) and partnerships with leading retail financial portals, CCBN has created a revolutionary investor distribution network that delivers an unprecedented body of direct corporate information to the largest collective audience of institutional and individual investors in cyberspace. Headquartered in Boston, MA, CCBN has additional offices in San Francisco and London.