Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our first question is from Shyam Patil with Raymond James. Please go ahead with your question.
Shyam Patil - Raymond James
Hi. Good evening. My first question is around the cancellations, just wondering if you guys have seen any noticeable trends within certain pricing points or geographies for factors or the more services?
R. Scott Turicchi
No. I would say that it is pretty much across the board. What's unique about the cancel rate, it was predominately concentrated in the month of March. And we've actually seen a return to albeit elevated levels, lower levels in April than what occurred in March. So you had this blip up in March. I think that it was the lag effect from Q4 when the larger companies made their initial announcements of reductions and downsizing in their sales forces and across the board which actually took effect in Q1 and by the time they got around to looking at the services they needed for those employees who were no longer there, it happened to occur in the month of March where they did those clean ups.
I think that's pretty much rippled down the board including the smaller customers, but no, it was not unique to a specific either any area of the world, vertical, brand or a price point.
Shyam Patil - Raymond James
Great, thank you. And regarding the M&A environment, just wondering if you can talk a little about how valuations have trended past four months? Has there been any correlation with private valuations in the depreciation we've seen in the stock market? Or do you think that the private evaluations are holding steady and coming down a little bit?
R. Scott Turicchi
I actually think you've got kind of two groups of fellows. You have those that for whatever internal reasons are motivated and I would say certainly relative to a year ago, the valuation expectation has come down. I think we've demonstrated that within the last year, if we go back and we look at the Phone People acquisition which occurred almost a year ago and occurred at the highest multiple, and then you will forward to the CallWave acquisition of their Fax assets which occurred just six weeks ago, and that was the lowest evaluation but again it may have being in between and occurring in November of last year.
There is a second category though of companies who may have enough financial wherewithal, either because they have hoarded some cash or operate on a cash profitable basis, and I think we're finding there they tend to be holding out not too outlandish evaluations may be of two or three years ago, but certainly evaluations more consistent with a year ago and those evaluations we're not particularly enthusiastic about executing against.
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