FindWhat.com's first-quarter profit rose 41 percent, the paid search company said, as it benefited from strong demand for search advertising.
Like Ask Jeeves and Yahoo, FindWhat.com saw solid first-quarter sales growth. Revenue rose 55 percent year over year to $24.7 million. Net income was $3.8 million, up from $2.7 million in the same period last year.
CEO Craig Pisaris-Henderson said the company's acquisitions of e-commerce tool provider Miva, desktop software maker Comet Systems and European paid search company eSpotting Media would make FindWhat a “robust global marketing company.”
“In short, our goal is to help online businesses find new high-quality sales prospects, get those prospects to convert into customers and keep those customers coming back through retention-based marketing services,” he said in a conference call with investors Monday evening.
In addition to its acquisitions, FindWhat inked a private-label deal to power the paid listings service of Verizon's SuperPages.com. It also partnered with Thomas Global Register to start a business-to-business paid listings service.
FindWhat's paid listings appear on a collection of more than 230 lower-profile search sites such as Dogpile and Webcrawler.
FindWhat, Fort Myers, FL, raised its financial guidance for the year. It now expects $174 million in sales and $34 million in earnings excluding a number of expenses.
The company expects its deal with eSpotting will close by October. Separately, eSpotting said it returned its first profit in the first quarter on $30 million in sales. The FindWhat-eSpotting deal was held up for nine months after a FindWhat financial audit found discrepancies on eSpotting's balance sheet.
