WOWSomething is brewing at Infoseek! I can feel it!
I have to say that I expect a major move by this company very very soon, you can take this as hype but something is going on here, if XCIT can do those numbers and SEEK can sit quiet with all this volume...come on people...are you missing something here? My opinion is that SEEK is really holding something back to astound us all.
Be ready when it happens, this chart is a major flag and a major hidden secret, hold on! and read this report. I mean they announce a major buyout and amazing earnings and SEEK is so quiet, wait who is the number two search engine, wasn't it SEEK, yes you got it!
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By Samuel Perry REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Oct. 16 (Reuters) - Excite Inc on Thursday reported sharply higher than expected revenues and earnings for its third quarter and agreed to buy Internet shopping service Netbot for stock worth $35 million.
Reporting after the market close, Excite reported a net loss of $5.7 million, or a 37 cents a share loss on revenues of $14.4 million, compared with a net loss of $9.4 million, or 78 cents, on revenues of just $4 million a year earlier.
The loss was well below Wall Street analyst consensus estimates of 49 cents a share, as polled by First Call, and revenues were also about 30 percent above projections.
Analysts said the report, combined with the acquisition, set the company on a solid business and financial path.
"Excite now is a real company,"<<(AND SEEK IS?)>> said Keith Benjamin, an analyst at Robertson Stephens, a San Francisco investment bank.
"Excite has now put up big numbers that demonstrate it is a very solid number 2 to Yahoo! <YHOO.O>.<<(WHO WAS?)>><<(HELLO!)>> More importantly they have shown that there is a big prize for second place in this market," he said, adding Excite's traffic levels also surged.
"This is the first time that Excite showed material brand momentum," said the analyst, who estimates that $89 million in cumulative backlog will provide about $9.5 million in incremental revenues this quarter and $40 million next year.
Excite Chief Executive Officer George Bell said in an interview the company expects revenues to continue to be strong in its fourth quarter, but not necessarily with the same order of increase as in the sharp jump in the third quarter.
"We expect revenues to be strong," he said. "To do $70 million in booked revenue in one quarter (Q3) is extraordinary.<<(AND SEEK DIDN'T...I DOUBT IT...expect similiar comparing the two relatively!)>>
It's going to be a hard feat to follow, especially since we've already committed so many obvious key categories."<<(AND NO ONE ELSE IS DOING THIS?..)>>
The categories include merchant areas like books, with Amazon.com <AMZN.O>, compact disks, airline tickets, stock trading partners and electronic greeting cards.
Excite plans to enhance its online shopping service by integrating Netbot intelligent shopping technology, Jango, into the Excite Shopping channel in the fourth quarter.<<(REMEMBER ULTRASEEK!)>>
"Excite is aggressively expanding its efforts in electronic commerce, Bell said. "We intend to create the best shopping environment for consumers and retailers on the Internet."
The deal has been approved by Netbot shareholders and its board and by Excite's board, he said, and is subject to a definitive agreement and accounting and regulatory approvals.
Bell said in addition to improving shopping capabilities, Netbot also provides proprietary search algorithms which will improve the way in which Excite can fetch data from databases and create opportunities for consumers on the Internet.
Separately, the Internet media company said that Steve Case, chairman and chief executive of America Online Inc.
AOL.N> has resigned from Excite's board of directors.
The resignation of the high profile executive of AOL, which holds a roughly 17 percent stake in Excite, reflects in part the complexity of business deals involving the Web.
While Excite has taken over AOL's search businesses and become a supplier to the online service, it is increasingly competing for the attention of the same consumers.
"This gives us greater freedom of operation to challenge them," said Bell, noting that conflicts of interest had prevented Case from attending many board discussions.
Meanwhile Intuit Inc <INTU.O>, which has a similar stake as America Online, has formalized its observer-status to Excite's board. William Campbell, president and CEO of Intuit, will serve as observer to the Excite board, effective immediately.
sam.perry@reuters.com, in Palo Alto, +1 415846 5400 REUTERS
23:20 10-16-97
<<(YOU TELL ME, I THINK SEEK IS GOING TO FLY!)>>
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