First Ecom, a Hong Kong-based company listed on the Bermuda Stock Exchange (BSX), have announced their first financial year end results.

The young company, still in their development stage, who have formed a joint venture with the Bank of Bermuda, posted year end results on December 31 as a net loss of $6.79 million.

President and CEO of the company, Gregory Pek lauded the results and said: "We consider 1999 to have been an excellent first year.'' The $6.79 million loss was largely due to start-up costs of the new company.

First Ecom is a global provider of electronic payment processing and much of the start-up costs were devoted to development of the first phases of the payment processing technology and installing the payment gateway.

Nominal revenues of $2,634 were generated from its first merchant accounts.

Mr. Pek said: "From modest speed capital beginnings, we've established relationships with some of the strongest names in e-commerce, and finished the year with significant funding from institutional and other investors.'' Looking ahead Mr. Pek held that the company was well on its way to realising its goals for 2000.

"This includes delivering our payments processing solution to banks in South East Asia,'' he said, "through our joint venture with the Bank of Bermuda, expanding our presence into markets worldwide, and pursuing a listing on the NASDAQ national market system.'' Ecom announced at the beginning of December that the Bank of Bermuda had invested $6.5 million in it.

Alan Richardson executive vice president retail clients for the Bank of Bermuda expressed excitement about the venture.

"We are very excited about what this investment will mean, not only for the two companies, but for the vast number of banks and their merchants that understand the clear advantage of out sourcing payment processing,'' he said.

"Payment processing has always been the corner stone of e-commerce and other types of credit card transactions, and we believe that First Ecom.com's payment processing solution will be regarded among the best.'' STOCKS STK