First Call Enhances Content and Functionality of Its Web Portal; First Call's Web Portal Now Offers Free Access to Company Tip Sheets and Content from StreetEvents

Business Wire, Dec 20, 1999

Business/Technology Editors

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 20, 1999

First Call Corp., a Thomson Financial company, has enhanced the content and functionality available on its Web portal, FIRST CALL Web 6.1, accessible from www.firstcall.com. First Call's customers are now able to access Thomson Financial Interactive's Tip Sheets and content from StreetEvents, free of charge. Users also are able to import text files into their portfolios and to export a list of portfolio tickers and company names. There is also an e-mail link on Analyst Coverage, allowing companies and brokerage firms to send their updates directly to First Call's Editorial Operations.

As part of First Call's Web Partnership Program, FIRST CALL Web 6.1 now offers seamless access to the content available from StreetEvents, a service of CCBN.com. StreetEvents (www.streetevents.com) offers Internet access to corporate conference calls, brokerage conferences and investor meetings, along with the exact dates of corporate earnings releases. More than 5,000 of the largest U.S. corporations, including the S&P 500, currently provide StreetEvents with straight-from-the-source event information.

"We are very pleased to make our content accessible from First Call's Web portal," said Jeff Parker, president of CCBN.com and co-founder of First Call Corp. "The information that we offer is complementary to the research and quantitative information already available on First Call's services. Our partnership with First Call allows us to expand our global distribution, and provides valuable information to First Call's customers."

First Call is also providing its customers with free access to company Tip Sheets, as provided by Thomson Financial Interactive, a sister company to First Call targeting individual investors. A company Tip Sheet commingles a company's pricing and performance information, business overview, consensus earnings estimate and recommendation, other key quantitative measures, Insider Trend Index, and company snapshot onto a single report. The Tip Sheet includes performance charts, as well as intra-day and full year pricing charts and trade volume charts.

"It is our goal to maintain our position as the leading Web portal for the global institutional marketplace by partnering with companies that provide important financial information," said Bill Davenport, executive vice president in charge of FIRST CALL Institutional Services. "Given the overwhelming amount of data now available to investors, we differentiate between the interesting and the important to provide only the most pertinent information to our customers."

Analyst Coverage, a complimentary service that has been available to First Call's Web customers since 1998, allows users to search by various criteria to identify which brokers and analysts are covering which industries and companies. With the direct e-mail link to First Call, corporations and brokerage firms are now able to update their information online.

CCBN.com is the leader in a rapidly emerging industry supporting essential communications between public companies and the investment community over the Internet. Founded in 1997 by Jeff Parker, creator of First Call, CCBN.com is the leading provider of Web-based solutions for corporate-investor communications. Through IR Online, StreetEvents, and other product offerings, CCBN.com provides services to more than 5,000 U.S. public companies and 350 institutional investment firms. For more information about CCBN.com, please visit: www.ccbn.com.

First Call Corp. is the global financial community's leading Internet provider of real-time broker-sourced research, earnings estimates, equity and fixed income ownership information, insider trading information, and corporate news releases. More than 5,000,000 research documents are available on the FIRST CALL Network. First Call's distribution capabilities, research services, competitive intelligence product, usage reports and customized business solutions provide value-added links between the institutional buy-side and the sell-side worldwide. For more information, visit First Call's Web site at www.firstcall.com.

Thomson Financial is a US$1 billion provider of information services and work solutions to the worldwide financial community. Through the widest range of products and services in the industry, Thomson Financial helps clients in more than 70 countries make better decisions, be more productive and achieve superior results. Thomson Financial is part of The Thomson Corporation, one of the world's leading information companies. With annual revenues of more than US$6 billion, Thomson has interests in specialized information and newspaper publishing. The Corporation's common shares are traded on the Toronto and London stock exchanges. For more information, visit www.thomsonfinancial.com.