Cogent Communications Group Inc.
1015 31st St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20007
www.cogentco.com Year founded: 1999 Industry: Telecommunications Revenue: $59.42 Million Net Income/Loss: $140.74 Million Earnings per share: $0.56 Dividend: n/a Stockholder equity: $244.75 Million Auditor: Ernst & Young LLP Stock: COI Assets: $344.44 Million Market capitalization: $27.21 Million 52-week high: 3.24 6/10/2003 52-week low: 0.32 4/15/2003 Chairman, president and CEO: David Schaeffer CFO: H. Helen Lee Employees: 194 Local employees: 100 Description: Cogent sells extremely high-speed Internet access to small and medium-sized businesses in large cities over its own fiber-optic network. Developments: The company yanked itself from the brink of financial disaster last year by negotiating with creditors to slash debt of $410 million to $27 million. Cisco Systems Inc. had loaned Cogent more than $260 million to help the 1999 start-up build a coast-to-coast fiber network. As a result of the restructuring, Cisco wound up with an 18 percent stake in the company. Public shareholders, meanwhile, saw their stake decline to about 2 percent. While Cogent is still losing money, it has grown into one of the world's biggest Internet traffic carriers and holds fiber assets that could make it a tempting target for big telecom companies. Chief executive Dave Schaeffer said the volume of Internet data traffic Cogent carries is second only to the amount handled by MCI. Cogent grew quickly through an acquisition spree, snapping up eight companies during the past few years. Its biggest prize was PSINet, which owned a vast fiber network and which Cogent bought during a 2002 bankruptcy proceeding. In January this year, Cogent made its eighth acquisition, paying no cash for the financially ailing LambdaNet Communications in France and Spain. The deal gave Cogent a large European fiber network that had cost $1 billion to build. Cogent is retooling the network to handle Internet traffic that its American customers send to and from Europe. In the past year, Cogent expanded its work force by about 20 percent, to 240 employees. In addition, Cogent nearly doubled the number of office buildings it has wired to its high-speed Internet network in the United States, to 925 from 518. About 5,000 businesses inside those buildings subscribe to Cogent's super-fast Internet access service. "Our goals for this year are to complete the integration of assets we acquired in Europe and perhaps look at other acquisition opportunities there,'' Schaeffer said. Executive Compensation
Chairman, President and CEO: David Schaeffer
Total Cash: $250,000.00
Total Compensation: $6,627,823.00
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