Italian personalization and services giant Buongiorno posted Q2 earnings just before the US markets closed today...actually they reported consolidated H1 2009 earnings, which always seems like an obfuscation tactic to me (and required me to do some extra math). Anyway, here are some highlights:
Basically the concerns I've raised about Buongiorno in the past stand. This is a Mobile Content 1.0 company trying to stay relevant in a 2.0 world, with mixed (limited) success...it's a dinosaur. My guess is that we will continue to see their quarterly revenues erode as consumers seek more sophisticated content for their more sophisticated devices (and bail on sleeper subscription services), and that they will need to keep cutting costs to maintain profitability. Buongiorno could reverse the path to extinction if one of its new ventures really takes off (it won't be peoplesound, btw) or it buys its way into relevance. If not, the good news is that the process will be slow, since they've just about achieved a worldwide personalizaton duopoly with Spanish rival Zed.
- Revenue declined 17% from the same period last year & 2% from Q1 2009.
- Net increased $5.17mil from a small loss in the same period last year and & 65% over from Q1 2009
- B! claims 7.6mil subs on its BlinkoGold graphics, tones & games D2C service & 300k subs on their nascent "peoplesound" mobile social network
- B! claims that its carrier services businesses....which includes CRM tools, contest management & hosting a games portal on TIM made positive contributions to earnings in Q2
- The company is now generating 90% of its revenue outside of its domestic market, Italy
- Marketing Services extended a contract with Orange UK & picked up a deal to sell ads on mobile sites owned by the Espresso Group... and contributed $5.6mil (6%) to Q2 revenue
- B! is still trimming the fat following their July 2007 acquisition of iTouch (for $185mil)...and has reduced headcount 21% in 2yrs to 994, reduced the # of legal entities in the company from 100 to 77, closed offices in 13 countries and moved customer care to South Africa
Basically the concerns I've raised about Buongiorno in the past stand. This is a Mobile Content 1.0 company trying to stay relevant in a 2.0 world, with mixed (limited) success...it's a dinosaur. My guess is that we will continue to see their quarterly revenues erode as consumers seek more sophisticated content for their more sophisticated devices (and bail on sleeper subscription services), and that they will need to keep cutting costs to maintain profitability. Buongiorno could reverse the path to extinction if one of its new ventures really takes off (it won't be peoplesound, btw) or it buys its way into relevance. If not, the good news is that the process will be slow, since they've just about achieved a worldwide personalizaton duopoly with Spanish rival Zed.
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