Voice Assist Announces 2010 Financial Results, Year-To-Date Strategic Progress

LAKE FOREST, Calif., April 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Voice Assist, Inc. (OTCBB:VSST), a leading developer of hosted speech services and voice "in-application" technology, today announced financial results for the period ending December 31, 2010 and provided a review of business activities for the first quarter of 2011.

Michael Metcalf, Voice Assist Chairman and CEO, commented, "The last several months have been momentous for Voice Assist, as we recruited a team of proven industry leaders, established initial commercial relationships and began what will be an aggressive rollout of our technology through a robust and diversified distribution program. Partnerships with Jabra and Salesforce.com's Chatter expose our state-of-the-art hosted speech platform to a large and ideally suited target audience, and provide immediate credibility to benefit future alliances. Though only recently launched, these agreements have led directly to new subscribers since January 1, 2011 and provide the foundation for expected growth during 2011. Our pipeline for additional collaborative opportunities is robust, both in terms of quantity and quality. Our optimism for the future has never been higher."

Recent Highlights

• Voice Assist partnered with Jabra, a brand owned by GN Netcom, a world leader in innovative headset solutions. Voice Assist will provide complete hands-free solutions, combining Voice Assist cloud-based speech services and Jabra hands-free devices, enabling users to increase productivity using any mobile phone or IP-connected device (such as the iPhone, Blackberry, Android phones, the iPad® and other tablets).
• Voice Assist was selected by Mobile Direct Response (MDR) to develop and host its speech recognition advertising campaign tool. By utilizing the Voice Assist platform, MDR provides its customers with an easy way to implement marketing and advertising campaigns across major wireless carriers.
• The Company announced commercial release of Voice Assist Standard that allows consumers to text by voice from any phone or device to any phone or wireless connected device, even mobile phones without a text plan.
• Voice Assist significantly strengthened its management team and board of directors. Key additions include:
  • Randy Granovetter was named President and elected to the board of directors. Ms. Granovetter has over 30 years experience in wireless and unified communications. She was the founder and CEO of Jabra Corporation (acquired by GN Netcom). In addition, she served in various management capacities at Microsoft as well as serving as Vice President for QUALCOMM's Internet Services (QIS).
  • Scott Fox was also elected as an independent director. Mr. Fox has over 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry, serving as the Chairman and CEO of Global View Partners, a strategic investment, mergers and acquisitions, and strategic consulting company and is also the Chairman of Cenoplex, a company providing innovative services to the wireless industry. Previously, Mr. Fox was the Chairman of the Board of the global GSM Association and also spent five years as Vice President Strategy and Chief Technology Officer for BellSouth, the predecessor to Cingular Wireless/AT&T.
  • Michael Silva, Chief Financial Officer - Mr. Silva brings over 20 years experience in the speech technology, mobile and wireless industry to the Company. He was the former CFO of Voice Processing Corporation and also served as vice president of strategy for Jabra prior to its acquisition by GN Netcom.
  • Vic Boyd, Chief Information Officer - Mr. Boyd has been supporting global enterprise voice and data infrastructure for the past 17 years. He consulted for SpeechPhone, LLC and was responsible for developing, coordinating, and implementing the voice and data infrastructure to support users throughout the U.S. and multiple foreign countries. Mr. Boyd has consulted for dozens of public and private Fortune 1000 companies in the U.S. and abroad, including AT&T, SBC, Avaya, Level3, MCI, WorldCom, and UUnet among others.
  • Tracy Roberts, Chief Product Officer - Ms. Roberts brings over 25 years of experience in delivering innovative products and services in key industries such as speech technology, mobile products and services, web services and unified communication solutions. She also led product development at SpeechPhone, LLC.
  • Andrew Fox, Vice President, Developer Partnerships and Programs - Mr. Fox brings over 15 years of experience to Voice Assist. Previously, Mr. Fox worked for RealNetworks as its Senior Marketing Manager.
  • Robb Cason, Vice President of Enterprise Sales - Mr. Cason brings more than 25 years of experience in direct sales, channel sales, and business development for high-tech and communication services firms. Mr. Cason served as vice president of business development and strategy at InterCall, Inc. Prior, he was at Microsoft where he led a team that enabled strategic partners MCI, British Telecom, and InterCall to achieve greater than 100% year-over-year growth in Live Meeting revenue.  
  • Lisa Porter, Vice President, Marketing and Communications - Ms. Porter has 20-plus years of experience in the wireless industry in marketing and communications, public relations, product and sales marketing and support. She was president and co-founder of Porter Creative Group, Inc., a high technology public relations agency servicing clients in the wireless, semiconductor and other high technology segments. She was also Vice President of Marketing and International Sales at Jabra.

"Voice Assist now has the proven team in place and important initial agreements formed, which will enable us to aggressively grow during 2011 and beyond," said Ms. Granovetter, Voice Assist's president. "We are working closely with Jabra and Salesforce.com to increase the utilization of our hands-free technology and to better integrate our platform into the offerings of our partners. The traffic at our booth at the CTIA Wireless 2011 conference in Orlando, Florida was brisk, and we met with key industry analysts as well as trade press. In addition, we had several positive meetings with companies looking to partner with Voice Assist so as to voice-enable their products, create bundles or collaborate in other ways. The excitement is building. Hands-free communication is no longer a thing of the future. Voice Assist has made it possible today, and we expect to benefit from the increasing attention on avoiding distracted driving and the need to access applications in the cloud quickly, intuitively and on-the-go."

2010 Financial Results

Voice Assist revenues for the year ended December 31, 2010 increased 59% to $1.25 million compared to $791,000 for the year ended December 31, 2009. Gross margin for the year ended December 31, 2010 was 73.4% compared to 52.6% for the year ended December 31, 2009. Operating expenses for the year ended December 31, 2010 was $2.0 million compared to $929,000 for the year ended December 31, 2009. Operating loss for the year ended December 31, 2010 was $(1.1) million compared to $(513,000) for the year ended December 31, 2009. Net loss for the year ended December 31, 2010 was $(1.3) million compared to $(748,000) for the year ended December 31, 2009.

The Company had $616,000 in cash and cash equivalents and $310,000 in Shareholders' equity as of December 31, 2010.

On March 31, 2011, Voice Assist filed its Form 10-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This filing includes detailed financial tables and management's commentary.

About Voice Assist, Inc.

Headquartered in Lake Forest, Calif., Voice Assist is a hosted and speech services company that enables voice in any application, network and device.  The company's cloud-based speech platform eliminates the need to use a keyboard or keypad to interact, and enables users to communicate, connect or transact using any application on any phone or other communication device.  The Voice Assist platform includes a fast and safe way to make calls, manage your e-mails, send text messages and post to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter by voice commands and provides a scalable solution for developers to add voice to any application.  For more information on the company, visit www.voiceassist.com.  

Forward-Looking Statement:

Forward-Looking Statement: Statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, our ability to retain the executives, our ability to generate "an aggressive rollout of our technology through a robust distribution program," the continued ownership and operation of the company, functionality of our technology, and any other difficulties related to risks and effects of legal and administrative proceedings and governmental regulation, future financial and operational results, including our expected growth during 2011, competition, general economic conditions, and the ability to manage and continue growth.

Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual outcomes may vary materially from those indicated. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements we make in this news release include market conditions and those set forth in reports or documents we file from time to time with the SEC. We undertake no obligation to revise or update such statements to reflect current events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

Contacts:

Voice Assist, Inc.
Lisa Porter
949-655-1696
[email protected]

Investors:
Brett Maas
Hayden IR
646-536-7331
[email protected]

SOURCE Voice Assist, Inc.