SWEB, had a decent earnings report. Still holding shares. Not much price movement:
Stockgroup Announces Record Q4 and Fiscal 2005 Year End Results
Business Wire - March 20, 2006 08:00
NEW YORK, Mar 20, 2006 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- 12th Consecutive Quarter of Revenue Growth
Stockgroup Information Systems Inc. (OTCBB:SWEB)(TSX VENTURE:SWB), a financial media company that serves financial institutions, media publishers, corporations and the investment community, announced today that it closed the year ended December 31, 2005 with a record Q4, reporting its 12th consecutive quarter of revenue growth. A conference call and webcast will be held today at 4:05 PM EST to discuss the results.
Stockgroup(TM) reported Q4 revenue of US$1,795,813, up 31.6% over previous year, with earnings of US$58,717, up 45.5% over previous year. The Company ended its fiscal 2005 with US$6,099,528 in revenue, an improvement of 26.5% over fiscal 2004. It posted a loss of US$58,590, primarily due to a one-time settlement with its data vendors, reported in Q3 2005. The Company generated US$555,114 of positive operating cash flow and ended the year with US$2,056,761 in cash and cash equivalents.
2005 Review
Last year, Stockgroup set four key objectives:
1. Maintaining an innovative pipeline of products which will:
- Increase the value of current client licensing arrangements
- Make Stockgroup's services more appealing to new licensors
- Drive traffic to the websites and increase status with advertisers
In 2005, the Company successfully launched many new improvements, including a new portfolio system adding extensive analysis tools that allows users to segment their portfolio into sectors, risk profile, geographic regions, currencies and many content and alert features. The new portfolio system was launched on StockHouse(TM) and sold to licensee customers. Late in 2005, the Company launched in beta its new web browser-based portfolio management application with streaming real-time market data, branded StockStream(TM). The Company expects to launch the full commercial version at the beginning of the second quarter 2006.
As a result of the Company's focus on research and product development, the Company experienced its largest quarter and year of advertising and licensing revenue in its history.
2. Enhancing credibility with ad agencies through 3rd party research and new ad formats; thus increasing advertising status and revenue dollars per unit of inventory.
The Company hired Vision Critical / Nordic Research Group to conduct an updated user demographic study on StockHouse. In addition, the Company contracted with Nielsen / NetRatings and comScore Networks to enhance its profile with advertising agencies. comScore rates StockHouse as the second stickiest site in Canada amongst all site categories.
3. Increasing the sales force across Canada and the United States by 30%; thus driving new licensing agreements and increasing revenues from current licensing relationships.
Stockgroup was only partially successful in increasing the sales team and ended the year with 15 sales professionals. The Company expects to continue to add talented professionals throughout the year in 2006.
4. Launching a paid subscription product to brokerage firm clients and to the more than 600,000 investors at StockHouse.
Stockgroup was not successful in bringing out its StockStream streaming real-time quote portfolio management application in a commercial form by the end of the year. The Company expects to launch StockStream by the beginning of the second quarter 2006.
In addition, Stockgroup built and expanded its executive management team and board with highly experienced business leaders including:
- Bruce Nunn, Vice President of Marketing: Mr. Nunn is the former director of marketing for Fincentric, a wealth management software company and oversaw the marketing team which saw sales increase from $6 million to $63 million in 3 years.
- Darin Diehl, Publisher and Executive Editor for StockHouse: Mr. Diehl was the former executive editor/associate publisher for The Advisor Group at Rogers Media and managing editor for Global Strategies Mutual Fund Group.
- Theresa McVean, Director of Advertising Sales: Ms. McVean's experience includes account director at Euro RSCG 4D, the world's largest global interactive agency and senior account manager with Globe Investor the financial community of the Globe and Mail Media Group.
- Elisabeth DeMarse, Board of Directors: Ms. DeMarse spent 4 years turning around Bank Rate (NASDAQ:RATE) from $6 million to $37 million in revenue and subsequently saw the share price increase from $0.18 to more than $20. Ms. DeMarse also spent 10 years as a member of the senior management team with Bloomberg L.P. where she helped successfully grow the company from $50 million to more than $1.5 billion in revenue and was responsible for Bloomberg L.P. equity product which became a top three product in the world and grew revenues to more than $432 million.
Stockgroup announced it signed a four-year licensing contract with National Bank of Canada, Canada's 6th largest bank.
Marcus New, President and Chief Executive Officer of Stockgroup, was named as a finalist in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year(R) Pacific Region Award.
Stockgroup purchased 690,050 shares in the Company's buy back program, leaving the Company with 33,522,296 shares issued and outstanding at year end.
Focus for 2006
Stockgroup's business focus for 2006 will be on building and extending the StockHouse brand in North America, launching its real-time streaming portfolio management application, branded StockStream, and continuing investment in its platform for collaboration and the enablement of social networks in the financial information industry. These products and infrastructure will help arm our enterprise customers and retail investors with the information, tools and social networks of like-minded traders to succeed in the stock market.
Stockgroup will grow profitability and shareholder value in the following ways:
1. Focus on building the StockHouse brand in its existing community of users and extending this brand throughout North America to capture a larger segment of the online advertising market.
a. The emergence of online social networks, where people act as Citizen Journalists and interact with and influences each other, is transforming society. Stockgroup believes that the social network community it has created at StockHouse will be an ever more powerful influencer in the way information is developed and shared amongst the investment community.
b. The general media and brokerage industry today cover a small minority of the companies that are listed and traded on the North American markets. StockHouse maximizes this opportunity by delivering real-time information sourced, rated, and contributed by its members on the more than 80 percent of stocks that are not covered by the general media.
2. Take Stockgroup's core strengths in collaboration technologies, portfolio management tools and analytics, and the enablement of social networks to the professional portfolio solutions market, where Stockgroup can participate in a $2.06 billion market opportunity.
3. Reinvest profits into product development and marketing to increase Stockgroup's position in its selected North American markets. This includes expanding the community aspect of StockHouse and integrating collaboration technologies into the Company's portfolio management and desktop applications to enhance Stockgroup's leadership position in the North American media and software markets.
"Our opportunity is to bring much of the functionality of a professional broker workstation down to an inexpensive price-point and help the consumer take advantage of the information and tools to trade on equal footing and gain market advantage," stated Marcus New, President and CEO. "Stockgroup facilitates social networks of informed, active investors, helping our customers share information that is typically unavailable in the public domain and become significantly more successful in the markets."
Stockgroup is positioned to continue being a leader in Canada's online financial media industry due to the strength of the StockHouse brand, its unparalleled breadth of aggregated news and information, and its innovation with collaboration technologies. The Company's strategic assets of collaboration technology, portfolio management and analysis tools, and the infrastructure to create social networks - enabling communication between broker and investor, investor and investor, and between private affiliate groups - will uniquely enable it to transform how successful people manage their investments.
Conference Call Details
To participate in the conference call, please dial 1-800-525-6384 five to ten minutes prior to the start time at 4:05PM EST. To listen to the live webcast, please go to www.stockgroup.com.
he earnings call will be recorded and accessible on our website for a period of one month. Participants intending to access the webcast should have Windows Media Player installed prior to connecting to the call. |
