Feb. 1, 06

Lycos U.S. Sells Quote.com to IDC For $30 Million Cash; Wired News Next? [by rafat] : I'm surprised it didn't happen earlier, or any other major data/financial portal didn't buy them. Quote.com, which was sold to Lycos back in the heydays, has been sold by its parent to financial data provider Interactive Data Corporation for $30 million in cash. Lycos U.S. is now owned by Korean portal company Daum.
Quote.com, also known as the Lycos Finance division, markets four financial services/data offerings, including subscription-based QCharts and LiveCharts services that provide real-time streaming data; Quote.com, a financial news and analysis website; and Raging Bull, an online investment community and message board site. Upon completion of the transaction, the assets of Quote.com will be operated as part of Interactive Data's eSignal division.
Lycos's rationale for the sale? "Over the past year, Lycos has evolved our business to focus on digital content creation, as a destination for people to create, store and market content. Going forward, it became evident that Quote.com did not fit in with this strategy..."
Slight tangent but a possibility: does this mean that company owned Wired News, which hasn't been doing well, is going to be sold? The rationale given above seems like it will be...
Quote.com currently employs about 30 people. It had 2005 service revenues of about $12.7 million with total costs and expenses, excluding amortization, of about $9.5 million.
Some history: Quote.com was sold to Lycos in 1999 for about $78.3 million in stock. Raging Bull was sold to Altavista and then sold to Lycos and now this. [Feb. 1, 06] | Biz/Fin |VC/M&A | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

[RT] State of the Trading Market: QCharts sold for < 50% of 1999 "value"

Feb. 1, 06