comScore Revenue Hits $31.4 Million in Second Quarter 2009

Reston, Va.-based comScore, Inc. reported second quarter revenues of $31.4 million, representing a nine percent increase over the same 2008 quarter. Net income for the quarter declined from the same quarter in 2008, however, due largely to non-cash expenses related to prior acquisitions. Net income for the three months ended June 30, 2009 was approximately $1.2 million, versus $1.7 million for the same period in 2008.

Subscription Sales Most Important

comScore’s Internet analysis and trend tracking provides business intelligence to many web-centric businesses, including ecommerce operations. It does this primarily through the tracking of approximately two million Internet users worldwide. Based on this sample, the firm is able to extrapolate the data to form analyses of online shopping habits, web usage and so forth. Roughly 87 percent of the firms’ revenue comes from subscriptions paid by web-related companies to access the data. The strategic nature of comScore’s research may have helped the firm increase revenues in spite of the much-lamented recession.

“We are pleased to report second quarter results that exceeded our expected ranges. Our overall revenue growth in the quarter was 9 percent while subscription revenue growth was 14 percent, both compared to the second quarter of 2008,” comScore President and CEO, Magid Abraham told investors.

“With healthy renewals among our medium and large customers, we saw renewals within our historical range of 90 percent or higher on a dollar basis, though we continued to see weaker renewals for our smallest customers, who were particularly affected by the economic downturn, in the second quarter,” said Abraham, adding, “We continued to successfully grow our revenues from existing customers by over 15 percent year-over-year. We added 100 new gross customers in the quarter with a net addition of 14.”

Fluctuating Stock Price

comScore was founded in August 1999. It has since grown both organically and by the acquisition of other companies. It first sold common shares to the public in 2007 and those shares now trade on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol SCOR. On August 4, 2009, the closing price of those shares was $15.37. This compares to a 52-week high of roughly $24 in August 2008 and a 52-week low of roughly $7 in November 2008.

comScore’s total market capitalization (price of the stock times the number of shares outstanding) in early August 2009 was approximately $463 million. This compares to Google’s market capitalization of $143 billion, while Yahoo!’s was $21 billion. Omniture, the web analytics company, has a market capitalization of roughly $1 billion. NetSuite, the hosted ecommerce platform, saw a market capitalization in early August of roughly $760 million.