• Our revenue and earnings are highly seasonal and our quarterly and annual financial results fluctuate significantly.
• We face intense competition from many companies in all of our business areas.
• Competition in the personal tax preparation software business is particularly intense, with Microsoft having entered the market during the 1999 tax season. We are seeing increasing price competition during the remainder of the tax season (including free products from Microsoft), and this could have a material negative impact on revenue, profitability and market position for our personal tax business.
• In our online mortgage and insurance businesses, we face competition from many newly public companies that have a narrower business focus, increasing financial resources and less demanding earnings expectations.
• We must continue to establish and maintain important distribution relationships for our Internet-based products and services and successfully market and promote these products and services.
• We must maintain high reliability for our server-based Web services. In particular, our web-based tax preparation and electronic filing services must handle extremely heavy customer demand during the peak tax season.
• If we fail to provide responsive customer service and technical support, we could lose customers.
• Our Internet businesses face risks relating to customer privacy and security and increasing regulation.
• Our Internet businesses require significant research and development and marketing expenditures.
• Page views and reach statistics for our Quicken.com site can vary significantly from month to month due to seasonal trends, site performance, the timing of launches, competitors' activities and other factors. Adverse changes in page view and reach statistics could adversely affect our ability to earn advertising revenue from our Quicken.com site.
• In order to succeed in the payroll services business, we must continue to improve the integration of the operations of our payroll processing subsidiary, streamline customer activations for our online payroll processing service and focus our traditional payroll service on existing distribution channels.
• The technology and services of certain alliances for our QuickBooks Internet Gateway initiative still need to be completed and integrated with QuickBooks, and are subject to risks and uncertainties involved in the product development process, including technological difficulties, possible delays, and availability of financial resources. Significant delays in implementing key services, or failure to implement, could delay or eliminate our ability to recognize contractually committed revenues.
• The anticipated benefits of certain proposed small business services to Intuit (including the Site Builder website creation tool, Site Solutions services and QuickBooks Internet Gateway services) will depend on a number of variables, including the rate at which customers upgrade to QuickBooks 2000 and future versions of the product, customer acceptance of new and proposed services, and the level of satisfaction of third party participants.
• The success of the small business alliances will depend on establishing and maintaining a number of important business relationships, and there can be no assurance that key relationships will be established and, if established, will continue.
• Our Tax and Quicken Internet Gateway initiatives, and related new services to be offered in these areas, are in very early stages. Success of these initiatives will depend on establishing and maintaining business relationships with key participants and completing necessary technology development and integration, as well as achieving broad customer acceptance of the services to be offered.
• We offer electronic bill payment and bill presentment services, and the My Finances web-based personal finance management service, through licensing arrangements with a joint venture in which we are a participant. The success of these services for Intuit will depend on a number of factors, including timely and cost-effective completion of ongoing development efforts, customer and biller adoption and participation rates, and the status of the relationship with the joint venture. Intuit has an option to purchase the interests in the joint venture that it does not currently own between May 2000 and May 2002, at a formula-driven price that could exceed $100 million. If we do not exercise the purchase option, our rights to use the technology developed by the joint venture will be subject to future negotiation.
• We face increasing competition for access to retail and OEM distribution channels.
• The integration of acquired companies poses ongoing operational challenges and risks. In addition, our recent acquisitions have resulted in significant acquisition-related expenses.
• Our mortgage business is subject to interest rate fluctuations, and the impact of interest rates on Intuit's operating results has become more significant since the acquisition of Rock Financial was completed.
• Our recent acquisition of Rock Financial could have a negative impact on Intuit's relationships with other lenders that participate in the online mortgage service
• We hold investments that have been very volatile.

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