Inktomi reported a loss Thursday that was less than Wall Street expected, as sales of search-engine software and Internet traffic products more than quadrupled.
Inktomi also said it will sell an additional 3 million shares to the public in an offering. In addition, Goldman, Sachs & Co., the lead underwriter for Inktomi's June initial public offering, will release its lock-up restrictions on the company's shares. As a result, up to 1.1 million shares could be sold on 28 October.
Excluding one-time charges for the acquisition of C2B Technologies, Inktomi (INKT) reported a net loss of US$6.6 million, or 28 cents a share, compared with a loss of $4 million, or 24 cents a share, a year ago. Analysts had forecast a loss of 33 cents a share, according to research firm Zacks Investment Research.
"They continue to execute," said Ryan Jacobs, portfolio manager for the Internet Fund. "Their future is still very bright."
The company -- which supplied the main searching technology for Internet directories like Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN -� said revenues shot up 317 percent to $8.3 million, from $2.0 million a year ago.
With a $1 million charge for the C2B acquisition, Inktomi had a loss of $7.6 million, or 33 cents per share, in the quarter ended 30 September.
Inktomi gets paid for every query made on search engines that use its software. The Inktomi Search Engine processed 1.35 billion search queries during the quarter. It also signed up customers like @Home Network, Grolier of France, and GlobalNet 2000. Current customers include Yahoo, Microsoft, and CNET's Snap. The HotBot unit of Wired Digital, the parent company of Wired News, also uses Inktomi software.
Sales of network caching software -- which speed up the transfer of data within local-area networks and local parts of the Internet -- rose to $4.2 million in the latest quarter, from $60,000 a year ago.
"Both sides of our business are growing," said David Peterschmidt, president and CEO of Inktomi. "We are indexed to the growth of the Internet. If it's growing, you'll see our revenues grow."
Peterschmidt said the company's near term strategy is to "get C2B [technology] into the market and roll out more customers." C2B writes technology that lets Internet directories and online vendors set up comparison shopping services. Inktomi plans to sell the service "to the same types of companies that search services go to," said Peterschmidt.
The results came out after the market closed. Inktomi shares closed up $7.56 to $90.56.
