| ISMagazine.com | Tech Investing |
August, 1999 |
MarketWatch.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: MKTW) today reported revenues of $4.8 million for the 2nd quarter of 1999, a 217% increase over the comparable period of the previous year and a 55% increase over revenues of $3.1 million reported in the quarter ended March 31, 1999. Net losses were $12.8 million, or $1.02 per share, for the 2nd quarter. This compares to net losses of $2.8 million, or $0.31 per share, for the comparable period in the previous year and $6.1 million, or $0.52 per share, for the quarter ended March 31, 1999. A significant portion of the reported losses (approximately $8 million or $0.64 per share) were attributable to non-cash charges for network advertising and promotion provided by CBS to the Company and amortization of goodwill and other intangible assets resulting from the acquisition of BigCharts, Inc., which closed on June 9.
"Our revenues, exclusive of BigCharts, were $4.4 million, an increase of $1.3 million over our last quarter," said Larry Kramer, President and CEO of the company. "This represents good growth in all of our business lines, and we believe that it reflects the strength of our core assets. In addition, we are also very pleased with the important new revenue opportunities that BigCharts brings to our company."
The company also reported significant increases in traffic and users of its cbs.marketwatch.com web site during the quarter. Exclusive of BigCharts, MarketWatch.com's websites served 287 million page views in the second quarter, an increase of 175 million, or 156% from the comparable quarter in the prior year and an increase of 52 million, or 22% from the first quarter of 1999. In addition, BigCharts.com served 23 million more pages during the 20 days it was part of MarketWatch.com at the end of the quarter.
The monthly average number of unique visitors to the company's web sites was 3.8 million in the second quarter of 1999, an increase of 217% and 15% from monthly averages of 1.2 million a year ago and 3.3 million in the first quarter of 1999, respectively. These reach numbers are calculated by DoubleClick, which serves ads on the company's sites via its DART service. These do not include BigCharts users, who will begin to be counted in July.
"We are particularly happy with our growth in pages and users over the past quarter," said Kramer. "During the first quarter we experienced substantial increases in both due in part to our highly publicized IPO. Our growth during the past quarter demonstrates our continued acceptance as an important provider of financial information.
"We are particularly pleased with our financial performance in the second quarter," Kramer added. "We have continued to make important investments in technology and infrastructure while managing our margins. These investments have already resulted in improved site uptime and speed. Building a more flexible site architecture will enable us to more rapidly broaden our product offerings and respond to the needs of our audience, advertisers, and licensing partners."
The Company's CBS.MarketWatch.com site is a leading Web-based source
for comprehensive, real-time business news, financial programming and analytic tools.