February 10, 2004

The deal was put into limbo after FindWhat discovered problems with the British search company's finances that called into question Espotting's claim of profitability.

After nearly nine months of delay, FindWhat.com signed an amended agreement to acquire European paid listings provider Espotting for about $170 million.

The purchase price is higher than in the original deal struck in June, thanks to FindWhat's soaring stock price. FindWhat closed at $19.44 yesterday and reached a 52-week high of $27.94 in September. FindWhat's stock was priced at under $15 in June.

The new deal is more heavily weighted toward stock, lowering the cash amount from $27 million to $20 million and number of shares from 8.1 million to 7 million. The amount of cash will vary based on Espotting's assets at the closing date.

After its audit, FindWhat said Espotting lost $12 million in the year before the merger and $7 million in the last nine months of 2003.

The acquisition greatly expands FindWhat's geographic reach, adding Espotting's paid search deals in six European markets and Japan. Espotting has lost some key distribution deals, including Yahoo Europe and Ask Jeeves UK.

FindWhat announced the amended deal with its fourth-quarter earnings. The company reported net income of $3.5 million on $21 million in sales. FindWhat said the deal should add to earnings within one quarter after closing.

Source: DM News

Read Serge Thibodeau's daily blogs on search engines at Serge Thibodeau Live. We strongly suggest you bookmark our web site by clicking here.

Get your business or company listed in the Global Business Listing directory and increase your business. It takes less then 24 hours to get a premium listing in the most powerful business search engine there is. Click here to find out all about it.

Rank for $ales strongly recommends the use of WordTracker to effectively identify all your right industry keywords. Accurate identification of the right keywords and key phrases used in your industry is the first basic step in any serious search engine optimization program. Click here to start your keyword and key phrase research.

You can link to the Rank for Sales web site as much as you like. Read our section on how your company can participate in our reciprocal link exchange program and increase your rankings in all the major search engines such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo and all the others.