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Managing Director's Review
This has been a very busy year for ADVFN and has seen sales grow from £3,303,000
last year to £4,463,000; a growth of 35% in turnover. It has seen both our
subscription levels grow to record levels and our advertising income rise
strongly to reach historic highs. We have also been on the acquisition trail,
buying Equity Development and entering the acquisition process with
InvestorsHub.com and Silicon Investor, two superb US investment bulletin boards
which we have subsequently purchased.
This strong sales performance extends the consistent year-by-year growth and
expansion of ADVFN. We have set out to grow by investing both at home and abroad
and this objective is being realised at an accelerating rate. Alongside
developments in direct markets we have been developing our Japanese and
Brazilian joint ventures which by the year end were reaching completion, and
have since enjoyed successful soft launches.
By aggressively investing, we have not only grown sales but also broadened the
scope of our offering and our international revenue from both subscriptions and
advertising sales. The ADVFN platform is now addressing exciting global markets
with local language versions of the site and this is driving growing levels of
business. This is most easily appreciated when looked at in terms of registered
user acquisition which is currently running at levels 50% higher than in 2005.
We now have sites in Brazilian, English (British and American), French, German,
Italian and Japanese, with a geo-targeted site aimed at the Indian market and a
new joint venture for China and Hong Kong. Meanwhile the acquisition of
InvestorsHub.com and Silicon Investor, a process that began in the spring of
2006, has added significant traffic and sees ADVFN become a top tier US stock
information provider. This platform gives us critical mass in the key US market,
and 2007 will see us bring our content to the Silicon Investor and
InvestorsHub.com user bases while exploiting the exciting revenue opportunities
provided by the leading equity market in the world. ADVFN has had good
advertising sales in the US in 2006; and 2007 should see a substantial rise in
revenue from North America.
Current Trading
Since June of this year our user base has expanded and has grown a further 10%
from 700,000 to over 770,000. Across all our businesses, total user numbers grew
100% over the last year to 2,000,000 from 960,000 at June 2005.
Prospects
We have long stated that we believe that it is in the best interests of
shareholders that ADVFN invests to grow and that no one wants to own a tiny cash
cow operating in a market that would fast pass it by. As such we have carefully
invested our capital into developing ADVFN so that it can become more than a
small niche provider of UK price data and share chat. We feel that this process
is coming to fruition. 2007 will see ADVFN using its global platform - and in
particular its US acquisitions - to generate further strong top line growth.
Gross margins for an online service are high and this will drive a strengthening
bottom line. We are particularly enthusiastic about the prospects for
InvestorsHub.com and Silicon Investor where traffic levels offer many lucrative
opportunities for sales revenue and where traffic levels can be enhanced by
ADVFN's information products.
This leads us to believe we are opening a new chapter in ADVFN's history,
one in which we will grow quickly.
Clem Chambers
Managing Director
14 November 2006 |
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