Convera 3Q 2009 Results
December 20, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to GuruFocus.com’s information about Convera’s third quarter 2009 10-K report. Interesting reading. You can find a summary on the GuruFocus Web site. You can access the full SEC filing here. The news is that Convera is getting smaller like a zip file. I did find one comment that was germane to my work:
As of October 31, 2009, Convera has 60 vertical search websites with 23 separate publishers under contract, with 50 of these vertical search sites in production and 10 of the websites in development awaiting launch. At October 31, 2008, Convera had 82 vertical search websites from 28 publishers under contract, of which 45 were in production and 37 were in development awaiting launch. Despite the overall increase in sites in production on a year over year basis, revenues generated by the sites have declined. This decline is due in part to the renegotiation of contract rates with a major customer as well as reduced ad rates. Our ad share levels have suffered as publisher’s online ad revenues have declined as a result of the current economic downturn.
I noted the “renogotiation”. And this metric is a keeper: 60 Web sites generated in the third quarter a comprehensive loss of $2,324,000 or about a negative $39,000 per Web site. That’s a fine payoff from the Convera vertical search business model. The fact that Convera made sales to publishers makes clear that its customers have a sixth sense for a deal. As I reflect over my general knowledge of Convera, the firm did not make scanning pay off, enterprise search pay off, or government contracting pay off. Little wonder search and content processing has to work hard to get the tune for R-E-S-P_E-C-T out of its sound track.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 21, 2009
Oyez, oyez, I wrote this for free. I want to report this to the SEC because it needs to know that Convera and the addled goose have near zero revenue in common. I am at a loss for words, just not a loss of money.
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