Infoserve Share Discussion Threads

[gimme sunshine] 27/4/2007 13:04

hi steve, don't think there is anyone else.

It is impossible to even guess at this stage. more detail on the yahoo deal is needed. I am hoping to speak to the management on monday. fc to mar 07 is 3.9mil turnover and looking at h1 they should be looking to smash that.

[stevenspooner] 27/4/2007 12:29

Why the mark down yesterday? How's confidence with everyone else?

Any chance of achieving broker's estimate of 23 million turnover in 2 years?

[gimme sunshine] 25/4/2007 11:14

I think they have an impressive sales pitch, also like the way they intend to capture market share though mass sites and focused industry sites. the rise in turnover in q2 rose 100% over q1 and I am keen to see the h2 numbers. only then will it be possible to see what scale is required for profitability. I suppose the safest bet would be to wait for the results in early june.

I got in these early on the day of the announcement and might as well hold untill the story becomes clearer. the management do not appear to be cowboys and have a lot tied up in this.

[wjccghcc] 24/4/2007 10:53

Thanks for that sunshine. I'm keeping an eye on them but it's hard to put a value on it yet. The local search market is very competitive and likely to get more so. The yahoo deal is a good one but do you actually use yahoo search? Personally I just use google with the place name.

Also see the statement from Yell today (although that refers to the US becoming more competitive).

[wjccghcc] 23/4/2007 11:39

Nope. Just new FSA disclosure regs means they need to reiterate their current holdings.

[gimme sunshine] 23/4/2007 08:44

director buys it would seem

[gimme sunshine] 16/4/2007 13:20

what's up, something seems to be stirring.

[gimme sunshine] 05/4/2007 00:13

Another riveting day, mind you for an illiquid stock, it doesn't seem to move much on trades. only 2 today both sells.

back to sleep

[leeson03] 02/4/2007 16:22

yump

Good post. A different angle on things ..

[illiquid investor] 02/4/2007 16:04

......hoods barnes and oliver have over 85%........give it a year.........see where it goes.....

[gimme sunshine] 02/4/2007 15:23

turnover was 0.6m for Q1 and 1.19M for Q2 to september 06

[gimme sunshine] 02/4/2007 12:31

re post 20. that's were the yahoo deal is good, people searching on yahoo will get infoserve local listings. to me that seems to have a lot of potentail. although you need to sell to customers first.

[gimme sunshine] 02/4/2007 12:22

good post yump.

I think the yahoo deal will prove to be a major breakthrough for INFS. Not sure how long before we will get more information but year end has just gone.

[yump] 02/4/2007 12:07

Slightly o/t, but in affiliate marketing it is a well known fact that you don't earn much unless you advertise in context with relevant advertising fitting what your site visitor is viewing.

It may be location,location,location for selling houses, but its relevance, relevance, relevance for net advertising.

[yump] 02/4/2007 11:59

Whatever happens with Infoserve, I would advise anyone investing in this area to research and understand the history of companies like Touch and the history of the many attempts to create local search / local directories online.

A lot of businesses are going about trying to capture online local advertisers in the way that they captured offline print advertising.

But capturing the local search market is a key component of most of the larger ISP's / Search engines.

However its not easy. There are 2 sides to it.

The first is that a company running an online directory could rely on search results, because online, people do not behave like they do offline. In general they use a search engine - they don't go to a familiar directory. Unfortunately search results are not reliably guaranteed to throw up any particular directory or set of results at the top.

The second is that a company can spend on establishing a brand, just like in the offline world. That will be expensive, because its a war out there - there's no established brand and the brands that are there are getting erratic results for local businesses, because there's a load of them and visitors visit them randomly.

Key to the whole thing is getting the visitors to give local businesses good results. The problem is that whereas Yellow Pages offline has established almost a monopoly, online that hasn't happened.

So in order to establish the online directory, you have a large number of telesales people all phoning local businesses, trying to get them to upgrade their free listings to a 'premium' one or such like. That's very expensive and local businesses probably consider they get enough calls wanting them to advertise online.

Another problem is that the economics of online advertising are different from offline. Online space is cheaper, you can't charge what you charge offline, but you've got to pay the telesales people the same money.

It will be interesting to see how this develops, having seen Touch peter out.

Online is a huge mash of businesses trying to get local advertising:

Natural search results directories.
Google itself, via pay-per-click (which is actually hugely effective for many businesses).
Local directories promoting themselves through pay-per-click.
Offline directories trying to establish their online advertising.

Its the wild west. The directories that will really reap the benefits are the ones which local businesses go to under their own steam to get listed.
Are there any ?

imo they will emerge from community-based sites. It has been said that the 'blanket' advertising approach of the past is going to change and that advertisers will be looking for niche sites with loyal communities and that those will carry valuable advertising space.

Infoserve targeting football sites appears to be a move in that direction - will be very interesting to see how it pans out.

The only question might be this: Do people react the same to advertising, when looking on their football team's site as they do to a banner on the football field itself. Using the net puts people in a different mindset - a very targeted mindset.

Would you use a business-finder on a football site ?

[gimme sunshine] 30/3/2007 13:37

bought 15k more today. that's it for now.

trying to get my hands on the broker report from jan

[leeson03] 29/3/2007 13:30

GS

I've been using it since last week. Still worried about the big spread, however another decent deal today. Haven't purchased any yet .. but getting tempted.

[gimme sunshine] 29/3/2007 13:01

Leeson

I also checked out thier web site. pretty good. I will certainly use it.


Regards

[gimme sunshine] 29/3/2007 12:56

Leeson

Great find, buying into these quite heavily now. It would seem that the deal may well be a blockbuster.

Very good article.

I'm suprised that now one has realy picked up on these, i realy like this bit;

In a statement, it said: "Info-serve intends to offer four sponsored advertising positions on each page within Yahoo! Local for all towns, cities and postcodes in the UK.

"Management estimate that if it was to secure only two advertisers for only 100 discrete locations across only 125 distinct product categories, this would generate an additional £6.5m annual revenues and require an additional 90 telesales staff.

Nice one

[leeson03] 28/3/2007 15:25

Cracking little company bags of potential .... The Spread is a bit of a bummer. I have used their website and it's not bad at all. Anyway for more information on the Yahoo deal look below ...



Company wins deal with search specialist
IT company Infoserve has clinched a deal with leading internet search station Yahoo! which could see at least a six-fold increase in the North-East company's turnover and bring hundreds of jobs to the region.

The Darlington firm announced yesterday it had won the exclusive rights to provide Yahoo! with search facilities in the UK, in a deal that will "change the scale of Infoserve's operation".

Infoserve - a hybrid of a local search engine and online business directory - will now become the official Yahoo! Local advertising sales partner, and will sell listings to businesses that will appear as links on Yahoo! Local results pages. Advertising revenue will be split between the two companies.

Last night, Infoserve's broker, WH Ireland, predicted the company's expected turnover of £3.99m this year would grow to at least £23.16m by 2009 on the back of the deal.

Infoserve, which already has plans to almost triple its 125-strong workforce by creating 225 jobs over the next 18 months, is to increase that figure significantly as a result of the growth.

Last night, it said it was "likely" that hundreds more jobs could be created.

The deal was welcomed by the City yesterday, with Infoserve's share price almost doubling on the back of the announcement, rising from its opening rate of 31p per share to a high of 60p.

A spokesman for Infoserve, which provides on-line advertising services to about 20,000 UK businesses through a network of over 100 websites, last night confirmed the deal had been done, but said the company was unable to comment as matters were still at a sensitive stage.

But WH Ireland said the deal promised to be massive for Info-serve, which has recently relocated its headquarters from Stockton to premises on Darlington's Morton Park.

In a statement, it said: "Info-serve intends to offer four sponsored advertising positions on each page within Yahoo! Local for all towns, cities and postcodes in the UK.

"Management estimate that if it was to secure only two advertisers for only 100 discrete locations across only 125 distinct product categories, this would generate an additional £6.5m annual revenues and require an additional 90 telesales staff.

"This is a tiny level of market penetration compared with the 2,350 different categories of business used in Infoserve's database.

[kevinlinus38] 24/3/2007 11:16

Monis - They made a 1 million loss not 106M! Good job they didnt with a market cap of just 7M they would be in a lot of trouble!

[gimme sunshine] 23/3/2007 15:36

could be a biggy, will try to find out some more details with regards to revenue share

[gimme sunshine] 23/3/2007 15:34

From mediawatch 23rd feb

Infoserve launches advanced online local business directory
Infoserve, the local search companies, has launched a new online business directory that will make it significantly easier and faster for the 76% of the UK population searching for businesses on the Internet.
The new website, www.infoserve.com, will be invaluable to those small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) wanting to cost-effectively promote themselves online. Infoserve.com is a hybrid of a search engine and a traditional business directory, allowing users to search freely by keyword rather than fixed category, in any UK location.

The new website has taken Infoserve two years to develop and offers a range of advanced features, which are unavailable, collectively, on any other online local business search site.

Infoserve.com's features include:

• A simple to use search page with only two questions to answer; 'What?' and Where?'

• The latest keyword search technology to return very targeted and specific results for every search. For example, if a user searches for 'Birthday Cards', the website will search through more than 1.4 million keywords before returning very specific results of where to find birthday cards in the chosen location.

• Predictive search suggestions similar to a mobile phone's predictive text facility, so a user may only need to type in a few letters to complete the search

• A Send and Save facility allowing the user to save the business details to their address book or desktop, to send it by email or text message, and send to the printer. The details can even be saved to My Infoserve, the user's own personal directory on Infoserve.com

• Interactive mapping so a potential customer can see exactly where the business is located on their results page

• An 'Update your Details' facility that allows a business to add new contact details and relevant keywords at any time online to increase the chances of a potential customer finding the business. For example, when a business introduces a new product or service, the new keyword can be added to Infoserve.com on the launch day to ensure the business is found immediately by web users searching for that particular product or service.

Speaking about the launch of the new website, Infoserve's CEO Steve Barnes (pictured) said: "It is incredible to think that 76% of consumers now choose the Internet to locate goods and services, as opposed to only 18% who still use paper-based directories.

"It is essential, therefore that companies make the most of this by ensuring they can be found quickly and easily on the Internet. Additionally, our new site will allow businesses to update their keywords at any time, which means potential customers can easily find the most up-to-date services and products offered by any business.

"By designing infoserve.com to achieve all these functions, and be extremely user-friendly we are confident that we will be the local business search website of choice for those searching online to find local companies."

On Infoserve's new website, all businesses will have a natural listing, which includes the company name, address, and telephone number. For businesses keen to maximize their web presence and improve their Internet marketing, premium listings are available, which include priority placement in each category, full colour logos and pictures, and additional information pages, along with a link to the business' website.