Findwhat Stock Price

[bostonseo]

Anyone seen how low the stock price is now for FindWhat? Just over $4 a share; this stock was over $20 5 months ago. I pulled all clients out last year so I'm not surprised...but I didn't think this company would decline so rapidly. Obviously other advertisers became fed up with them and stopped advertising with them....good to see advertisers' taking action.

[wayne]

I see Findwhat was included in this article:

Stocks at risk from spitzers attack on spyware:
[internetstockblog.com...]

[GameMasterM]

The stock price has little to do with average advertisers bailing out. They voluntarily pulled questionable affiliate sites beginning back in November and this pressured earnings the last two reporting periods.
They face no less then 6 class action lawsuits over the differences they had with their accounting firm. The firm E&Y left last week.
Their lawsuit with Overture/Yahoo is now in the hands of a jury in Federal Court in Santa Ana Ca.
Most do not know this because it has been ignored by the search industry writers and mainstream media. It looks like this will change as the Wall Street Journal has something tonight behind their Subscription wall.
If Yahoo loses the implications for the industry could be substantial.
The market cap is now 1/2 that of Gurunet (Answers) if you back out Findwhats cash. FindWhat will earn up to 200 mil in 2005 and Gurunet will only earn a fraction of that.
Wall Street is a funny game.

[bostonseo]

FindWhat will not exist by the end of 2005.

[GameMasterM]

Maybe not as we know it today but the service will be there. They are often discussed as a buyout candidate due to their low share price and potential value to the acquirer.
Their Pay per call initiative is just now gaining traction with early adopters enjoying categories with no competition. I have a listing in the real estate area and right now enjoy much of the West Coast for my specialty with no competition.

Findwhat pay per call listings are now found in Google. I don't know if the TOS here will allow a link but I see hundreds of FindWhat paypercall listings on G. (organic)
I read here the complaints of so many disgruntled advertisers who use FindWhat. I am not in that camp right now.

[wayne]

Findwhat used to be my favorite place to advertise back in 2000-2003, but they really
went downhill last year. I've noticed the bids
are much lower now with the keywords I used to
bid on than they were back in 2003. I do not
get good results with them at all anymore.

[BriGuy20]

As a part-time stock picker, the third-tier search engines (FindWhat, LookSmart, etcetera) would (at first glance) be at the top of my list of stocks I'd consider shorting. I don't really consider myself a savvy enough investor (as of yet) to short stocks, but part of me just hears that investor jumping off a cliff/hedge fund manager jumping out a window sound with the aforementioned stocks.

Right now, FindWhat is obviously in trouble. They seem to be trying a move to quality (by eliminating the non-converting affiliates from their network), but I think that, barring a serious turnaround or a miracle aquisition, the stock is headed into the fifth circle of bankruptcy hell along with Enron and Worldcom.

Stepping onto the side of devil's advocate, however, it's a stock that has been battered, perhaps unfairly. As I already mentioned, it IS trying to weed out the bad apples that aren't converting traffic, which (in and of itself) is a good idea in the long run. If the advertisers don't make money, the advertisers will leave. If the advertisers leave, you have a bankrupt company. If (and it's a BIG if) FindWhat can successfully rescue advertiser ROI, it stands a great chance to become a great turnaround story and a great turnaround stock.

I think one of Wall Street's largest flaws is its tendency to take short term results (of one or two quarters) and extrapolate them out forever. In my opinion, the best way to beat the market is to find a stock where the extrapolations are overblown and wait until the landscape changes and the downward extrapolations turn into upwards extrapolations.

The problem is that many times, these extrapolations can be accurate. While we remember the turnaround stories, there are hundreds more stories of companies that cannot correct a horrible tailspin and fade into oblivion (and go bankrupt). I'm not confident enough at the moment to predict which way FindWhat will go.

[Tropical Island]

Great link Wayne.

We were with FindWhat since the beginning and enjoyed some nice traffic at a low cost.

We then noticed that some of the more visible terms were being whacked with sudden increases in clicks that couldn't be explained from normal search patterns.

We cut those out and then early this year we just let our account run out.

We haven't missed them.

It's not surprising to me that their stock is falling. the fact that they have any advertisers left at all is surprising.

My guess also is that they will not make it past 2005 in their current form.

[watchthis]

well they are now partnered with seek99.com so the quality is not exactly going to increase.