Replies to post #283 on Rhythmone PLC (fka BLNKF)

[plfminthemiddle]

Blinkx swings to FY profit as revenue doubles



Wed May 18, 2011 2:34am EDT

* Pretax profit $6.1 mln vs loss of $8.9 mln last year

* Revenue rises 96 percent to $66.1 mln

May 18 (Reuters) - Video search-engine operator Blinkx swung to a full-year profit, boosted by higher advertising revenue as it continued to increase its audience.

Online advertising has, for some time, been the fastest growing segment of the overall ad market, with online video ads running before or after video clips achieving the highest prices from marketers.

The company, which indexes audio and video content, and makes it searchable and available on demand, added new clients such as Kleenex and American Express Co during the year.

Pretax profit was $6.1 million for the year ended March 31, compared with a loss of $8.9 million last year.

Revenue almost doubled to $66.1 million.

The company recently bought online ad network Burst Media for $30 million to help build personalised online TV channels that should command premium rates from advertisers.

Shares in Blinkx, which have gained 28 percent since the company's trading update in April, closed at 142.5 pence on Tuesday on the London Stock Exchange. (Reporting by Purwa Naveen Raman in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel)

[plfminthemiddle]

Boosted by higher ad revenue and big client acquisitions, video indexing and ad company blinkx on Wednesday posted a full-year profit.

For the year ended March 31, pre-tax profit was up $16.1 million -- not bad compared to the $9 million that blinkx lost during fiscal year 2010. Revenue nearly doubled to $66.1 million.

"This achievement was driven by a number of factors," said Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CEO of blinkx. Chiefly, he cited "the robust growth of traffic on the blinkx site, and the ongoing success of our advertising platform, AdHoc, in attracting new and repeat advertising customers, such as Kleenex and Microsoft."

This past year, blinkx increased its video streams in the United States and the United Kingdom by more than 155%, according to Chandratillake.

"During the year, we also continued to expand our cross-platform distribution initiatives through partnering with industry leaders like Samsung, the launch of blinkx mobile and the release of our Application Programming Interface for the Internet TV space," Chandratillake added.

The good news comes on the heels of blinkx's acquisition of Burst Media for $30 million.

With the Burst deal, blinkx hopes to bring its 35 million hours of online video and TV to Burst's network of over 157 million unique users. blinkx plans to create contextually relevant video channels for Burst's network of publishers, thereby aggregating an online video audience for advertisers, which it believes could rival the scale of television networks.

blinkx is known for indexing audio and video content, and making it searchable and available on demand.

Video ads remain the fastest-growing online ad format, and in recent research, eMarketer has forecast that the market will be worth $5.7 billion by 2014 -- up from $1.4 million in 2010.

This past year, brands such as Honda, Microsoft and Revlon booked campaigns with blinkx through various agencies, including Starcom Mediavest, Ogilvy and McCann Erickson.