DoubleClick Inc, New York, said in a conference call with analysts and the media after the stock market closed yesterday that it expects revenues in the first quarter of 2001 to grow 5 percent above those posted in the same quarter a year ago, to about $115 million.
The company noted that while it does not expect a “rapid recovery” in advertising spending in the first quarter, revenue from its non-dot-com clients is expected to rise. In fact, Stephen Collins, DoubleClick’s chief financial officer, said the company is seeing more business from traditional advertisers than from online companies.
Collins said the company has about 52 percent traditional clients and 48 percent dot-com clients. A year ago the mix was 60 percent in favor of dot-coms and 40 percent in favor of traditional clients.
“The traditional advertising business is becoming larger and more stable,” Collins noted. “Only our media business has felt the pressure from the online slowdown.”
The company’s media business was off 9 percent to 12 percent compared with the third quarter of the year, he said.
He also noted that DoubleClick expects to report $124 million to $126 million in revenue for the fourth quarter, or between breakeven and 3 cents per share. However, for the first quarter of 2001, the company is expected to report a loss of 5 cents to 7 cents per share.
Despite the positive spin DoubleClick put on its financial situation, Dana Serman, an analyst at Lazard Freres & Co. LLC, said the company has to perform better than it has been to sustain any sort of growth.
“DoubleClick, while not as dependent on media sales as it once was, must experience strong upticks in demand for ad serving in order to exhibit growth, and therefore to this extent still depends on increases in online advertising in general,” Serman said.
