Thirty-year-old MPL looks to the future with expanded services.

MPL Communications Inc., of Toronto, was formed more than 30 years ago by Steve Pepper and his fraternity brother at the University of Western Ontario, Barrie Martland. Today MPL is the largest publisher of financial advisory newsletters in Canada.

MPL's flagship publication is Investor's Digest of Canada (24x, $137/year) with more than 40,000 subscribers. MPL has five other investment newsletters which focus primarily on the Canadian marketplace. Investor's Digest of Canada uses a different format from the more traditional advisory newsletters: it comes to the reader as a newspaper tabloid.

MPL is betting heavily on the development of a new investor education program and the enhancement and expansion of its financial web site to dramatically increase the value of MPL and its stock (see above article).

For more than a year MPL has been developing an investor education program which combines print, software and web site products.

"Besides teaching good, sound, solid investing principles," Pepper said, "the twist on the course is that it teaches you how to use all the current modern technological tools that are available to be a better investor." It is almost ready to be launched.

The other key to MPL's hoped-for growth is its new and enhanced web site. MPL purchased a financial information site, www.carlsononline.ca, that was operated out of Van-couver and was primarily an advertising revenue model. The site will be merged with MPL's site, www.idonline.ca, to form www.adviceforinvestors.ca, a new site which will focus initially on the Canadian market.

Pepper admitted that they had some problems when they first launched their web site last year. This is one of the reasons that MPL bought the web site from David Carlson, who has joined MPL as vice president in new media. He has been responsible for merging and developing the new financial site.

A soft launch of the new site--that is, to MPL subscribers only--is expected in March. Eventually the site will be opened up to others as well.

In recent years the frequent strikes by Canadian postal workers crippled MPL's operations for brief periods when it was impossible for them to mail their publications. An expanded internet presence and the availability of much of the information on the web will ease the impact of any future postal strikes on MPL.

Idonline.ca, the site MPL launched last summer, is still operating with about 4,000 paying subscribers. It came with the promise of a 10 percent discount for life.

MPL offered a 100 percent refund for the first year since they reasoned that access to the web site would not cost them anything and subscribers had to continue their subscriptions to one of the newsletters in order to continue to have access to the web site.