Tue Nov 9 IVIL RESEARCH ALERT - Merrill starts iVillage - Reuters Securities
Tuesday November 9, 12:57 pm Eastern Time
RESEARCH ALERT - Merrill starts iVillage
NEW YORK, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Merrill Lynch said Tuesday it started coverage on shares of iVillage Inc. (NasdaqNM:IVIL - news), an Internet network aimed at women, with an intermediate-term accumulate rating and a long-term buy.
--''We believe iVillage has a real market opportunity, and that a women's portal could develop a very large and loyal user base,'' Merrill said in a research note.
''If the company's marketing campaign works as planned, and over the next 12 months iVillage exceeds our expectations for organic growth in traffic and revenues, we believe the stock will go up,'' Merrill said.
--The company is a women's Internet network with message boards, electronic-mail, chat rooms and personal homepages as well as tools like a pregnancy calendar and retirement planner.
--Merrill noted that iVillage's target audience is women age 25-54, which is attractive to advertisers on the Internet. Its revenue
mix is about 75 percent advertising and 25 percent electronic-commerce, the firm noted.
--The firm expects iVillage to report fourth-quarter revenues of about $15 million based on 133 million average monthly pageviews on the Internet site and revenue per pageview. Merrill said iVillage's average monthly pageviews should start to increase by about 100 million a year.
--Shares of iVillage traded up 5/16 to 25-1/4, off a 52-week low of 22-1/2 but far from its high of 130.
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