Rediff.com, the top Indian portal, has declared its Q4 and full year results for fiscal year 2006. The Nasdaq-listed company has ended the year in the black with profits of $1.2 million. It had revenues of $5 million for the quarter, and $18 million for the full year, both up about 48% over the previous year.
Annual Highlights
–Revenues for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2006 grew by 48% to $18.70 million compared to last year.
–India Online revenues for the fiscal year 2006 grew by 86% to $12.17 million compared to India Online revenues last year.
–US Publishing revenues for 2006 grew by 8% to $6.53 million compared to last year. This was partially driven by higher advertising revenues from India Abroad, a weekly news publication. US Publishing also includes India Abroad online.
–Gross Margins increased to 76% for the quarter, compared to 62% for the quarter ended March 31, 2005.
–Net income was $1.21 million, or 4.50 cents per ADS, compared to a net loss of $1.43 million, or 5.56 cents per ADS, last year. Earnings release here.
Fool.com columnist Stephen Ellis says, “But does strong revenue growth and profitability make Rediff the next Google? I don’t think so… It’s perplexing to me that while Internet access in India is rising exponentially, this company cannot monetize it. After all, Rediff has been around for more than a decade and has more than 43 million registered users, but ended the year with only $20 million in revenues. It has only 156 advertisers, with the top 10 making up almost 50% of its revenues. In comparison, Microsoft ran a test run for its new AdCenter a while back with about 6,000 advertisers.”
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