Articles for Internet

Social and Mobile Marketing to Drive Constant Contact Earnings

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Friday, February 3rd, 2012 by

Constant Contact (NASDAQ:CTCT) reported its earnings for Q4 and FY2011, recording a healthy 23% growth in yearly revenue, which was up to $214 million. ((Constant Contact Announces Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2011 Financial Results, SEC)) It also managed to improve its gross profit margin marginally to 71.3%. Constant Contact’s primary business is content marketing which is comprised of email marketing, event marketing and online survey tools. It has also ventured into social media marketing lately with offerings like Social Campaigns. It recently acquired a mobile loyalty card startup, CardStar, which it may use to roll out a new mobile marketing service. Constant Contact competes with Eventbrite, iContact and Surveymonkey as well as digital marketing offerings by Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) and Salesforce.com (NASDAQ:CRM).
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Amazon’s Margins: When Will They Improve?

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Friday, February 3rd, 2012 by

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has a history of treading on wafer-thin margins, but it seems that in 2011, investor patience was tested to the limit. Adjusted EBITDA margins fell from around 7% in 2010 to around 5.2% in 2011. While the stock suffered quite unsurprisingly, the big question is whether the company intends to put a brake on costs anytime soon. Amazon competes in the e-commerce and e-content space with companies like eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL).

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NYT Frees Up Roughly $30 Million; Mobile Investments Ahead?

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Friday, February 3rd, 2012 by

While advertising revenue continued to decline for the New York Times (NYSE:NYT) in 2011, the company also announced the sale of its remaining shares in the Fenway Sports Group, amounting to around $30 million. The move  seems to be in line with the company’s strategy of selling off non-strategic assets, much like it did with the Regional Media Group. The New York Times operates in an intensely competitive online advertising market, with players like Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Facebook.

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Amazon’s Media Sales Were Sluggish But Kindle Fire Should Steer Stock Higher

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Friday, February 3rd, 2012 by

While Amazon’s (NASDAQ;AMZN) Q4 and full-year 2011 earnings results proved disappointing to investors leading to an 11% drop after the announcement, we continue to believe that Kindle Fire volumes would push both e-commerce and e-content sales upwards. In addition, the company’s technology and content costs should also slow down as existing Kindle Fire users make media-purchases on their devices in future. Amazon competes in the e-commerce and e-content space with companies like eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL).

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Shutterfly’s Marketing Expenses Overshadow Solid 2011

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Thursday, February 2nd, 2012 by

Shutterfly (NASDAQ:SFLY) announced its Q4 2011 earnings, reporting impressive revenue growth of 54% for full year 2011, primarily due to its acquisition of Tiny Prints. The yearly revenue is now up to $473 million, in line with its revised estimates. However, its sales and marketing expenses grew more than 90%, dragging down its operating profit.

Despite tremendous increase in overall revenue, its operating profit in 2011 is almost 40% lower compared to 2010, which has led to a 10% drop in its stock price. Shutterfly competes primarily with services like HP’s (NYSE:HPQ) Snapfish, Kodak’s EasyShare Gallery, American Greetings’ Photoworks and Webshots brands, and evenApple (NASDAQ:AAPL) that ventured into this business lately, with its new Cards app on iOS. Read More »

OpenTable Earnings Next Week: What We’re Watching

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Thursday, February 2nd, 2012 by

OpenTable (NASDAQ:OPEN) will release its Q4 results on Tuesday, February 7, and given the sluggish economy, we could see this negatively impact results. Results could show the impact of diners holding back on going out, which in turn will impact OpenTable. Since it went public, OpenTable beat investor expectation by huge margins repeatedly before slumping in the early part of last year. In the last six months it has recovered about 30%. OpenTable competes in the online restaurant reservation business with Urbanspoon as well as the UK-based companies liveRES Ltd and Livebookings Ltd.

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Is the Market Being Unduly Harsh on Monster?

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Thursday, February 2nd, 2012 by

With an unsettling employment outlook ahead and and after slashing its sales force by almost 7%, Monster’s (NYSE:MWW) stock took a visible hit as the company released its Q4 2011 results. While the stock currently lingers at below $8-levels and peer LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) continues to expand, we believe that international revenue growth and healthy margins support the company’s stock to above $10-levels that we currently forecast.

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Monster Worldwide Inc: Hardly a Monster of a Deal

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Wednesday, February 1st, 2012 by

This was originally published by Frank Voisin. Frank’s value-focused analyses can be found at http://www.frankvoisin.com

Monster Worldwide, Inc (NYSE: MWW) manages a portfolio of websites that connect job seekers with employers in approximately 55 countries. With soaring unemployment for the last few years and a dearth of job postings the company has fallen on tough times, with revenues declining 32.6% in 2009 and roughly flat in 2010.

It seems logical to suppose that MWW’s fortunes would largely tied be to that of the real economy, in that MWW benefits from increased hiring activity, which is aligned with the business cycle. For value investors, the logic often goes something like this: the market often mistreats cyclical companies, putting greater weight on recent performance almost as if any single point in the business cycle will continue into perpetuity (there are a number of behavioural biases that lead us to make this mistake), resulting in expensive valuations at the peak of the cycle, and overly pessimistic valuations at the trough. Consequently, there are often opportunities in the trough. Read More »

Facebook Has 1 of Every 4 Display Ads in the U.S.

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Tuesday, January 31st, 2012 by

As investors await Facebook’s S-1 filing with bated breath, the social networking giant has crossed another milestone in the U.S. display advertising market, reaching a 27.9% market share in 2011 compared to the 21% in 2010, as reported by ComScore. With Facebook users expected to touch a whopping 1 billion in August, this number would only grow in 2012. Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) seems to be watching all of this closely and has resorted to certain desperate measures lately to promote Google+.

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AOL Pushes Mobile Ad Monetization With Mobsmith Partnership

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Tuesday, January 31st, 2012 by

AOL’s (NYSE:AOL) decision to partner with mobile advertising platform Mobsmith is an indication that the company is finally slowing down on acquiring digital content. The company has sufficient digital assets to offer, and the task now is to target this content as specifically as possible to the right demographics. As the year progresses, one can expect more mobile-based target advertising by struggling players like AOL and Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO).

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