Financial news and info site TheStreet.com announced its Q2 earnings and swung to a profit from a year-ago loss, helped by a jump in subscription and ads revenues. Profits grew to $3.2 million compared with a loss of $2.3 million in a year-ago period. Revenue jumped 60 percent to $12.4 million, from $7.8 million a year ago.
Subscription revenues jumped 57 percent to $7.4 million, and ad revenues rose 76 percent to $3.7 million. The number of paid subscribers to the company’s premium services increased by approximately 3,800, or 4 percent, during the quarter.
The average annual revenue per subscriber was $330 in Q2, an increase of 8% from the $305Q205 and a sequential increase of 1% from Q106.
However, operating expenses increased by more than half from the year-ago period, and 9 percent from the first quarter.
From earnings conference call (transcript from SeekingAlpha): The year-over-year increase was driven by higher compensation costs related to increased headcount; higher incentive compensation costs tied directly to the strong financial performance of the business; non-cash compensation related to the expensing of stock options; and increased revenue-share payments resulting from higher revenue.
Also, the company’s getting a CPM ad rate of about $17. CEO Tom Clarke: “We’ve been historically a little higher but when you get outside of the non-endemic type of advertising like the broker advertiser, you’re competing with other sites for a share of the wallet and, therefore, it comes down a little bit.”
More info in the release here.