Rediff.com's revenues totaled US$ 8.53mn, increase of 10%

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Rediff.com India Limited (NASDAQ: REDF), one of the leading worldwide online providers of news, information, communication, entertainment and shopping services to Indians worldwide, today announced its financial results for the third quarter ended December 31, 2007.

 

Performance Highlights:

 

Financial Results for the Quarter Ended December 31, 2007

• Revenues for the quarter ended December 31, 2007 totaled US$8.53 million, an increase of 10% over revenues from the quarter ended December 31, 2006. 
• India Online revenues, which include advertising and fee-based revenues, for the quarter ended December 31, 2007 totaled US$6.12 million, an increase of 8% compared to India Online revenues for the quarter ended December 31, 2006.
• US Publishing revenues for the quarter ended December 31, 2007 totaled US$2.41 million, an increase of 17% over US Publishing revenues for the quarter ended December 31, 2006.
• Gross margins for the quarter ended December 31, 2007 as well as for the quarter ended December 31, 2006 were 82% 
• Operating EBITDA decreased to US$1.33 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2007, compared to US$1.82 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2006.
• Net income for the quarter ended December 31, 2007 was US$1.00 million, or 3.45 cents per ADS, compared to a net income of US$1.51 million, or 5.20 cents per ADS, for the quarter ended December 31, 2006.

Registered Users

• Registered users grew to 62.7 million as of December 31, 2007, a 24% increase over the number of registered users as of December 31, 2006.

Advertising Business

• Highlights and trends for the India Online advertising business include:

1.   The number of companies advertising on Rediff's website for the quarter ended December 31, 2007 totaled approximately 230, as compared to approximately 160 during the same quarter in the prior fiscal year.

2.   The following five industry categories accounted for 50% of the India Online advertising revenues for the quarter ended December 31, 2007: Consumer Finance, Employment, Travel, Matrimonial and IT Products.

3.   For the quarter ended December 31, 2007, the top 10 advertisers contributed approximately 37% of advertising revenue for the India Online advertising business, compared to 62% during the same period in the prior fiscal year.

Product Innovation             

• We are taking a number of steps to accelerate the growth of India Online advertising revenues from these key advertiser segments.
  • One major initiative is our Search Verticals. We now have industry leading Job Search, Fare Search, Social Search (brand name Q&A) and Consumer Product Search verticals and our growth in users and search numbers in our Search services as a whole is higher than the growth of Search in the Indian market.
  • A second initiative is the re-design of our advertising platform to use more sophisticated algorithms to improve ad performance. This, we believe, will also enable us to strengthen our position in two key segments: the Search advertising and the Ad Network segments..

On other fronts:

• Our video distribution platform, I-Share, continues to make progress and we have signed up more media partners.
• Our mobile Search Services with a choice of tens of thousands of jobs and a wide range of airfares gained acceptance from more mobile phone operators while our online search of 85000 ringtones continued to gain traction.
• Our consumer Finance Portal, Money Wiz is showing strong user activity and growth.   

Financial Results

 

Revenues

Revenues for the quarter ended December 31, 2007 increased by 10% to US$8.53 million, as compared to US$7.75 million in the same quarter last fiscal year.

Revenues from India Online, which comprised online advertising and fee-based services, increased by 8% to US$6.12 million during the quarter ended December 31, 2007 compared to US$5.69 million during the same quarter last fiscal year.

Revenues from US Publishing for the quarter ended December 31, 2007 increased by 17% to US$2.41 million from US$2.06 million during the same quarter last fiscal year.  

 

Gross Margin

Gross margins for the quarter ended December 31, 2007 as well as for the quarter ended December 31, 2006 were 82%.

 

Operating Expenses

Operating expenses increased by 25% to US$5.67 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2007, compared to US$4.52 million for the same quarter last fiscal year, primarily due to higher advertisement and marketing; increased bandwidth; and higher payroll costs. Operating expenses for the quarter ended December 31, 2007 as well as for the quarter ended December 31, 2006 included a charge of US$0.44 million on account of stock-based compensation cost.

 

Operating EBITDA

Operating EBITDA decreased to US$1.33 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2007 as compared to an Operating EBITDA of US$1.82 million for the corresponding quarter last fiscal year.

 

Depreciation, Interest Income and Foreign Exchange

Depreciation and amortization expenses increased to US$1.66 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2007 compared to US$0.76 million for the same quarter last fiscal year.

 

Interest income increased to US$1.39 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2007 compared to US$0.94 million for the same quarter last fiscal year.

 

There was a foreign exchange loss of US$48,000 during the quarter ended December 31, 2007 arising from the conversion of cash deposits and other balances held in US Dollars into the Company's functional currency (the Indian Rupee) for financial reporting purposes due to the strengthening of the Indian Rupee against the US Dollar. 

 

Net Income

Net income for the quarter ended December 31, 2007 was US$1.00 million, or 3.45 cents per ADS, compared to a net income of US$1.51 million, or 5.20 cents per ADS, for the same quarter last fiscal year.

Total cash and cash equivalents and short term deposits with banks as of December 31, 2007 were approximately US$59.56 million. 

 

Sourced From: Genesis Burson-Marsteller