morning Larry ... did u get any sleep last bite?
the turnaround of Inet stocks ........ >>>>>>>>>>
Thursday December 13, 7:02 pm Eastern Time
Overture sees Q4 results above forecasts
(UPDATE: Adds details and comments)
By Andrea Orr
PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec 13 (Reuters) - Overture Services Inc (NasdaqNM:OVER -news), the Internet search service that features paid listings from advertisers, expects fourth quarter sales and earnings to beat forecasts by ``a meaningful amount,'' President and Chief Executive Ted Meisel told Reuters Thursday.
Meisel did not elaborate on what he considered to be ``meaningful'' upside, but did note, ``we have never used that word before, and we wouldn't have told you if it was only a tight range''``The business is humming,'' Meisel said.
Analysts who track Overture, which until recently went by the name of GoTo.com, currently are forecasting it will earn $10 million or 17 cents per share, on revenues of $76 million, according to a consensus of estimates compiled by Thomson Financial/First Call.
Those forecasts, showing strong growth from the year before, are based on guidance the company provided in October. Since then, however, Yahoo has entered two new partnerships, with Yahoo! Inc (NasdaqNM:YHOO - news) and InfoSpace Inc (NasdaqNM:INSP - news), which are now including Overture listings on its site
Although Pasadena, Calif.-based Overture pays those companies to include its listings, it typically grows its revenues by expanding its audience.
Under the Overture business model, companies bid for search terms, and the top bidder gets top listing when consumers enter that word in a search engine.
Meisel said that the larger the Overture audience, the more its advertisers are willing to bid on search terms. Yahoo, which gets about 218 million viewers every day, has significantly increased Overture's overall audience.
The success of Overture at a time when most other Internet content sites as well as other advertising companies are struggling, reinforces the promise of the paid listings business model. Advertisers unwilling to commit large amounts to major marketing campaigns have found paid listings a cost-effective way to reach a targeted audience.
Other Internet sites, such as Yahoo and CMGI Inc's (NasdaqNM:CMGI - news) AltaVista have also been drawn to the paid listings business as a way to boost their own revenues. Overture partners typically differentiate the paid listings from the regular search results, so users know when they are seeing an advertisement. |
