Earnings: Lycos Europe Freefalling En Route To Sell-Off
This story was written by Robert Andrews.
Another Lycos Europe earnings update, another terrible showing. The once-mighty portal, a separate company from Lycos US, swung to a big 9.8 million ($15.2 million) loss in the half-year to June, from a 48.7 million ($75.8 million) profit a year ago, after revenues collapsed from 41.2 million ($64.1 million) to 33.3 million ($51.8 million). Again, we have the now-familiar pledge the company "will mainly focus on the product offensive in order to stabilise the traffic", and, like most the of recent updates, the focus is on Lycos iQ - a clone of Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Answers, which itself is pretty dominant on Lycos' European turf - as well as behavioural advertising and German shopping guide Decido.
One wonders whether that portal has a listing for Lycos, which has been for sale since April with no sign of any buyer yet. The company says "progress is being" and a sale is expected in the next five months. On the acquisition, the company last week told me: "For the moment, there are no updates to be made." Release & Financials.
By Robert Andrews