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TWST: Can we start with a brief historical sketch of NetBenefit (LSE:NBT.L), bring us up-to-date with where the company is positioned today?

Mr. Wicks: NetBenefit started in the mid 90s when there was an opportunity for companies to work for people who wanted a domain name registered. At that time, there was very much a monopoly in the hands of VeriSign in the United States. As that monopoly was worn away, there were real opportunities for other companies to service the market as well. Very quickly NetBenefit realized there was an opportunity to sell hosting for web sites to go with the domain name. Essentially, people would ring up and ask for a domain name, but would also say, “I really need a website as well.” So the business developed in the hosting market also. In 2000, the company acquired NetNames. The company floated on the AIM market in the UK a year prior to acquiring NetNames, and at the time of acquiring NetNames moved to the main market. NetNames was a company that registered names primarily for larger corporates and had built the business in the US and in the UK. So it left the group in the middle of 2000 with a business primarily aimed at two market areas -- the corporate markets for the management of domain names for larger companies and the SME markets for the provision of packages of domain names and hosting. At around that time, the mass market for domain names collapsed. The peak was in March of 2000 and shortly after that, in line with the collapse of the Internet bubble, domain name registrations tailed off dramatically. NetBenefit along with many other companies had to rethink its strategy having been through a period of significant growth and significant investment. I joined a year ago following on the heels of a new chairman, John Parcell, who had previously been a main board director at Reuters. He had started the strategic rethink and we have continued with that. So now the company has built a range of products to maintain its drive into the two niches in the market where it had strengths, where it could actually influence the sale rather than just being passive in the sense of running websites where a domain name can be registered. The mass market is no longer growing so we needed to actually go and sell our products into those market niches. We built specific products for the management of portfolios of domain names for larger corporates, which I can say a bit more about in a minute; that part of the market is going very well for us. We have also moved the hosting part of the operation up the value chain to supply hosting packages to the larger end of the SME markets. So that is a quick sketch of the company and where we are today.

TWST: Looking forward, how would you define the growth strategy for the next 12-24 months?

Mr. Wicks: There are two elements. The first is that we want to continue to grow as quickly as possible and to grab as much market share as possible. We don’t charge corporate clients for registering and renewing, we charge them a management fee billed on a quarterly basis, which helps them to control their expenditure. So we are building a stream of recurring revenue, which gives us some forward certainty of our income. The next areas for us to develop into are the broader intellectual property markets and there are other things that we are already getting requests for, which we are not able to satisfy and won’t start to develop products for immediately. But they are in the planning stage. I don’t want to give lots of details about exactly where we will go next, but there is a growing requirement for somebody like ourselves to provide some online tools for monitoring people’s intellectual property on the Internet.