Some key highlights
Second Quarter 2008:
Licensing revenues were $7.2 million for the second quarter of 2008, a 22% increase from $5.9 million in the prior year period, due to continued organic growth and contributions from vBulletin, which the Company acquired in June 2007. This stronger growth is the result of new contracts signed within our Autodata division and, to a lesser degree, organic growth of vBulletin.
First Quarter 2008:
Licensing revenues were $15.8 million for the first half of 2008, a 48% increase from $10.7 million in the prior year period, due to continued organic growth and contributions from vBulletin.
Question and Answers Session:
Yun Kim - Pacific Growth Equities
Can you give us a status update on how the vBulletin acquisition has been performing? I think it’s been a year. I know you already mentioned that it is doing well, but can you give us any additional color, like any new initiatives besides price increases that you’re planning on to better monetize on the installed base or any other improvements that you could bring into that business?
Bob Brisco
The growth rate of the business is strong. I would guide you to better then our company wide average. So we’re pleased with how it’s performed since we’ve acquired it in the first 12 months. The bottom line performance I would say is even better still then that. We’ve got as you’d expect very high operating leverage because of the software nature of that business. From the product perspective we launched new features in the first half of the year, a couple of releases in the 3.7 series, they included better blogging tools, much stronger social networking tools and some other project tools with the software kit. Right now we are deep into product planning and requirement development for the next phase of vBulletin which has been going under the project name VB4 (vBulletin 4). We’ll probably come up with something a bit more glamorous then that when we get closer to release.
That’s a longer term project so you won’t see it this year. You’ll see it sometime next year. We haven’t locked in on a release date for that yet. The evolution of that product in four will be the biggest leap that its ever taken in that we’re thinking through and developing our way into a much more robust application that deals not only with bulletin boards and blogging and social media but better content management and better monetization tools and techniques that we think are available with any other software out there.
And as you alluded to, we’re thinking through and modeling right now how we’re going to go to market in terms of revenue model with that and I think the answer will be it will be a hybrid of different approaches the affect of which will be much higher yields from our customer base then we’ve realized so far.
Yun Kim - Pacific Growth Equities
Has the renewal rate been steady since the modest price increase?
Bob Brisco
Yes we took the increase in June and we had a good June and July. Yes, it’s holding well overall.
Sources: BusinessWire
Seeking Alpha
Webcast
I can be reading too much into it, but it sounds like a CMS is coming
Second Quarter 2008:
Licensing revenues were $7.2 million for the second quarter of 2008, a 22% increase from $5.9 million in the prior year period, due to continued organic growth and contributions from vBulletin, which the Company acquired in June 2007. This stronger growth is the result of new contracts signed within our Autodata division and, to a lesser degree, organic growth of vBulletin.
First Quarter 2008:
Licensing revenues were $15.8 million for the first half of 2008, a 48% increase from $10.7 million in the prior year period, due to continued organic growth and contributions from vBulletin.
Question and Answers Session:
Yun Kim - Pacific Growth Equities
Can you give us a status update on how the vBulletin acquisition has been performing? I think it’s been a year. I know you already mentioned that it is doing well, but can you give us any additional color, like any new initiatives besides price increases that you’re planning on to better monetize on the installed base or any other improvements that you could bring into that business?
Bob Brisco
The growth rate of the business is strong. I would guide you to better then our company wide average. So we’re pleased with how it’s performed since we’ve acquired it in the first 12 months. The bottom line performance I would say is even better still then that. We’ve got as you’d expect very high operating leverage because of the software nature of that business. From the product perspective we launched new features in the first half of the year, a couple of releases in the 3.7 series, they included better blogging tools, much stronger social networking tools and some other project tools with the software kit. Right now we are deep into product planning and requirement development for the next phase of vBulletin which has been going under the project name VB4 (vBulletin 4). We’ll probably come up with something a bit more glamorous then that when we get closer to release.
That’s a longer term project so you won’t see it this year. You’ll see it sometime next year. We haven’t locked in on a release date for that yet. The evolution of that product in four will be the biggest leap that its ever taken in that we’re thinking through and developing our way into a much more robust application that deals not only with bulletin boards and blogging and social media but better content management and better monetization tools and techniques that we think are available with any other software out there.
And as you alluded to, we’re thinking through and modeling right now how we’re going to go to market in terms of revenue model with that and I think the answer will be it will be a hybrid of different approaches the affect of which will be much higher yields from our customer base then we’ve realized so far.
Yun Kim - Pacific Growth Equities
Has the renewal rate been steady since the modest price increase?
Bob Brisco
Yes we took the increase in June and we had a good June and July. Yes, it’s holding well overall.
Sources: BusinessWire
Seeking Alpha
Webcast
I can be reading too much into it, but it sounds like a CMS is coming
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