comScore Disappoints Analysts Despite Growth

While Internet ratings firm comScore has posted a 39% increase in Q4 2007 revenue to $25.3m, its forecast of lower-than-expected profit for both Q1 and 2008 led to shares tumbling more than 11% in after-hours trading last night.

comScore is anticipating first-quarter earnings of 10 cents to 11 cents a share, which is well below analysts' predictions of around 16 cents a share.

For the full year, the firm expects a profit of 55 cents to 58 cents per share, which again falls well below Wall Street predictions of 82 cents a share.

Fourth quarter net income was $12.7m, up $10.1m compared with $2.6m for Q4 2006. International revenue was $3.5m for the quarter - an increase of 103% compared with the prior year period, and accounting for 14% of the company's total revenue.

'We are pleased with our business performance this quarter,' commented President and CEO Magid Abraham. 'We successfully completed an initial public offering at the beginning of July that has already provided us and should continue to provide us with added flexibility to grow our business and increase shareholder value. In addition, we launched ten new products in 2007 (such as web site measurement and ROI tools - www.mrweb.com/drno/news7595.htm and www.mrweb.com/drno/news7382.htm ) and continued to expand overseas with the opening of a sales office in Japan, which represents our first commercial presence in Asia.'

Abraham said that the firm plans to move into other digital formats, with the launch of a service to measure Internet use on mobile phones. He added that comScore also intends to establish a commercial presence in France and Germany during the year.

Web site: www.comscore.com.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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