First-quarter profit for database marketing services provider infoUSA more than doubled to $9.06 million versus $4.37 million in first-quarter 2004 as net sales rose to $95.1 million from $80.8 million, according to the company's earnings report for the quarter ended March 31 released yesterday.
The Omaha, NE, firm reported operating income of $15.6 million, up from $9.2 million for the first quarter of the prior year.
InfoUSA attributed its revenue growth to sales of its recently launched subscription products and successful integration of recent acquisitions. The firm bought retention-based e-mail technology firm @Once in February. It made several acquisitions in 2004, including service bureau Triplex Direct Marketing, business data firm OneSource Information Services and list firm Edith Roman Associates.
“We were pleased with our first-quarter performance,” Vinod Gupta, infoUSA chairman/CEO, said in a statement. “Our rollout of subscription products is proceeding better than anticipated and is gaining acceptance among small businesses, entrepreneurs and salespeople. We were successful in growing our subscription base while keeping our cancellation rates below 10 percent. Our strategy of migrating small-business customers from one-time purchasers of sales leads to a subscription-based service will be a gradual process but a key growth driver for infoUSA.”
The firm also said it plans to reduce data processing hardware and software costs by more than $5 million yearly starting in fiscal 2006.
Also announced yesterday was the appointment of Anshoo Gupta to infoUSA's board of directors. Gupta is not related to Vinod Gupta. The new board member has been president of JAG Operations LLC, a management consulting company, since 2003. Prior to 2003, he was president of the Production Systems Group of Xerox Corp.
Kristen Bremner covers list news, insert media, privacy and fundraising for DM News and DMNews.com. To keep up with the latest developments in these areas, subscribe to our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters by visiting www.dmnews.com/newsletters
