Steve Zhang: Probably, another two to three years.
Brendan Barnicle (Pacific Crest Securities): As you are also preparing for these new contracts, can you give us a little insight on how the hiring is going and how quickly you will be ramping, hiring in Q4?
Steve Zhang: Yes, I think I mentioned in the last quarter we see some challenge recruiting enough people. In the third quarter, we successfully added 250 people on our payroll and as we are looking at quarter four we expect another 150 people on our payroll.
Brendan Barnicle (Pacific Crest Securities): And the new contracts that you are signing as they benefit revenue and you project in the guidance, are they one-time in nature of should we expect these to be recurring sources of revenue?
Steve Zhang: We only recognize a very small percentage of the revenue in the third quarter and so going forward we will start recognizing the revenue we recently announced. And as we are deploying those new projects, we are getting requirements coming. So already are starting to negotiating follow-on contracts to meet our demand.
Brendan Barnicle (Pacific Crest Securities): You’ve looked at these follow-on contracts, and you think about those follow-on contracts now, did they tend to be as big or bigger than the first year’s contract or are they smaller and they diminish over time?
Steve Zhang: I think the follow-on contracts it’s very difficult to estimate a size yet since it’s basically new requirements coming in to implement new pricing plans, new bundled services, and I think it’s too early to predict the contract size because we are still trying to figure out the scope of the work.
Brendan Barnicle (Pacific Crest Securities): What percentage of these new contract wins is currently in deferred revenue and what percentage is still sort of off balance sheet?
Eileen Chu: We don’t give a breakdown on that. The new contracts we announced with China Telecom, we have recognized 10% of the revenue in this quarter. So, it is reasonable to assume that the bulk of it is sitting in our deferred revenue right now.
Brendan Barnicle (Pacific Crest Securities): As I think about the deferred revenue as a whole and not just the recent contracts but all the historical contracts as well, is it safe to assume that about 20% of deferred revenue reflects the total contract value that’s sitting off balance sheet or is there another number that we can use around that to get a best chance of how this can relate?
Eileen Chu: We don’t give breakdown on that, but when we sign a contract, that is a sales order to us, and that is not reflected in our deferred revenues. When we record it in deferred revenue that’s the time when we collect the cash amount in advance of us completing any work at all. So that will be sitting in our deferred revenue. Right now the amount that we have collected and reflected in our deferred revenue will be the contracts that we have collected the money but we haven’t delivered the service. And if you look at the standard contracts, we always collect a certain percentage as advance payment. And then when we deliver the project then we collect and another amount as the progress billing. So, it is really a rolling process. It is difficult for me to tell you exactly how many percent of it is in the deferred revenue right now.
Brendan Barnicle (Pacific Crest Securities): Is there a way to get a sense of how big that off balance sheet piece is and relative to the deferred revenue, if it’s 2X or 1X or three times or something like that?
Steve Zhang: I think our standard contract terms is generally [ph] ask customer for 25% to 30% pre-paid.
Brendan Barnicle (Pacific Crest Securities): Any thing different on the competitive front?
Steve Zhang: Not really. I think that we are still competing against the same old competitors we have been competing with that Linkage, Digital China, companies like that.
Brendan Barnicle (Pacific Crest Securities): You had mentioned that interest income was going to be down sequentially from where it was last quarter. So should we be assuming may be something below $2 million in contribution?
Eileen Chu: Yes, in the fourth quarter 2007 our investment return is approximately about $1.5 million – $1.6 million. So I think our expectation is to be lower than that.
Sean Jackson (Avondale Partners): I am trying to get a better handle on the distribution of your revenue amongst the three carriers because it sounds like China Telecom is becoming more important. Can you just go over approximately what that was in the third quarter and where you intend to see that not only in the fourth but really through 2009?
Steve Zhang: In the third quarter, China Mobile is still a majority of our revenue. It’s roughly 70% of our revenue contribution for our telecom revenue. And China Unicom plus China Netcom, since they only they have started to merge in the in the fourth quarter this year, in the third quarter China Unicom contributed 10% of the revenue, and Netcom contributed roughly 8% of the total telecom revenue.
Sean Jackson (Avondale Partners): Do you have any insight as to where do you think those percentages will go in 2009? |