LookSmart & Wall Street Estimates

[orion]

LOOKSMART (LOOK) - Looksmart's Conference Call has been Scheduled (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040830/sfm073_1.html). A rumor says: "Don't wait and sell". For the current quarter the whisper number is -0.04 and Wall street estimate is -0.05. The risk rating is high (http://www.whispernumbers.com/quotes.jsp?ticker=look).

According to their fundamentals (http://www.shareholder.com/looksmart/marketguide.cfm), things do not look smart. For the 6 months ended 6/30/04, revenues fell 32% to $43M. With a net loss of $8.9M, vs. an income of $1.1M See also their 10Q filing. (http://www.shareholder.com/looksmart/EdgarDetail.cfm?CIK=1077866&FID=1193125-04-135620&SID=04-00).

Orion

[seobook]

LOOKSMART (LOOK) - Looksmart's Conference Call has been Scheduled (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040830/sfm073_1.html). A rumor says: "Don't wait and sell". For the current quarter the whisper number is -0.04 and Wall street estimate is -0.05. The risk rating is high (http://www.whispernumbers.com/quotes.jsp?ticker=look).

According to their fundamentals (http://www.shareholder.com/looksmart/marketguide.cfm), things do not look smart. For the 6 months ended 6/30/04, revenues fell 32% to $43M. With a net loss of $8.9M, vs. an income of $1.1M See also their 10Q filing. (http://www.shareholder.com/looksmart/EdgarDetail.cfm?CIK=1077866&FID=1193125-04-135620&SID=04-00).

Orion

I thought microsoft was like 65% of their business before they lost them? if they lost that 65% and are only down 32% on revenue then they had to be doing some ok stuff elsewhere.

it is kinda weird that they were not making more profit than that when they had huge MSN search partner

[andrewgoodman]

Anyone who is close to this industry who continued to own LOOK stock in the months leading up to the obvious end of the MSN partnership -- let alone after that -- isn't thinking too straight.

Penny stocks of this nature are purely for savvy traders, IMHO. We're out of the range of investing.

Stock charts aside, until LOOK comes up with new ideas, or a big new partner, it's in second-tier or worse territory. You can obviously still generate some revenues that way, but as a company it's not in the same shape to control costs as some of their lean competitors, and as a company LOOK always worked better with more staff and quality people. (So that means losses.) I would hazard an opinion that today's LOOK is basically a completely different company than yesterday's LOOK.

Personally, I wish they would resuscitate the idea of (get this) the quality, human-edited Internet directory with a predictable turnaround time for submissions. They'd be the only one.

LookSmart followed Inktomi into the business model of submerging their company identity to that of the large portal partners they powered. In hindsight this was a mistake. At times, many users have liked all of Yahoo, dmoz, and LookSmart directories... as standalone properties. But none of them received the support they needed to really stay in the spotlight.

The world still awaits a quality, human-edited directory (or two). LookSmart once had the potential to be that thing. But when you're playing the junk-PPC traffic game, priorities tend to get skewed. Probably the best thing to hope for is a startup that takes a similar path, with good funding and fresh ideas, and employees motivated with stock options.

LOOK is going to have to -- yet again -- "bet the company" on something. But what will that something be? Maybe some consolidation might be in order. INSP gobbles up LOOK, or something, to be either eventually acquired by ASKJ or GOOG. (Isn't it great we can now talk in ticker symbols for all of the above?)

[orion]

LookSmart (LOOK) - The risk for LOOK is high (http://www.fool.com/news/mft/2004/mft04073004.htm?source=eptyholnk303100&logvisit=y&npu=y&bounce=y). This is not necessarily bad, it just a high risk. MSN's lost carved out a crater in LookSmart as MSN accounted for two-thirds of the $156 million in revenues that LookSmart produced last year. Their net loss was not as much as expected, so some insiders are optimistic about LOOK future. This is not the same as being bullish. A rumor has it some cannot wait to sell and even others are buying now just to sell after their financial presentation. The impact of their loss is explained in their 10Q (http://biz.yahoo.com/e/040809/look10-q.html). You may also want to check "Reducing our costs." and "Focus on our core business." paragraphs under "RESULTS OF OPERATIONS". They are resourcing to loss-neutralization strategies via wise management. So they are doing some "good stuff", at least management wise. LOOK is now at 1.48

Symbol || Time || Trade || Change || % Chg || Volume
LOOK || 11:26AM ET || 1.481 || 0.011 || +0.75% || 498,673

LookSmart is now refocusing on alternate avenues. According to this news (http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040831005210&newsLang=en), HighBeam Research, LLC disclosed a new agreement with LookSmart. LookSmart users can search and view article abstracts from the HighBeam for free via LookSmart's FindArticles (http://www.findarticles.com) service.

Orion

[garyp]

Personally, I wish they would resuscitate the idea of (get this) the quality, human-edited Internet directory with a predictable turnaround time for submissions. They'd be the only one.

Yes, they might be the only one for the commercial market but MANY excellent non-commercial general purpose web directories exist. Here, quality of the underlying resources TRUMP overall directory size. Selections are made by subject experts and info professionals.

Examples include:
The Resource Discovery Network from the UK
http://www.rdn.ac.uk
The directories this resource taps also offer numerous search options.

Virtual Ref Library from Canada
http://vrl.tpl.toronto.on.ca/internet/01net_f.html

Librarians' Index to the Internet
http://www.lii.org
Excellent annotations. Well maintained.
Subject access to all entries.
Updated weekly. RSS and mailing list with new entries.

Infomine
http://infomine.ucr.edu
Subject access to all entries.
mailing list with new entries.

AcademicInfo.net
http://www.academicinfo.net

Here are a couple of articles I've written about these tools for SearchDay.
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2161641
and
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2235331

[andrewgoodman]

Ask any undergraduate, unfortunately, and they will be increasingly unaware of such tools. It gets worse after you've graduated and you rely on radio ads about "life engines" to tell you how to live.

There certainly does seem to be a hole in our educational system. Probably though it's human nature that even when it comes to using resources like those you mention, it helps if there is one that has some kind of hegemony or mindshare.

Anyway, I admit I am referring to commercial services when I refer to the likes of LookSmart. After all, this thread is about Wall Street. :eek:

[andrewgoodman]

Slightly off topic but looking at the Toronto Reference Library's page -- how unappealing! Frames even! Not exactly Joe Camel, is it?