E-commerce company IMall Inc reported third-quarter results that suffered from the now-abandoned seminar and training business, something that has historically brought in 90% of its revenue. The Santa Monica, California-based company posted a net loss of $3.8m on revenue up 49.0% at $355,000, compared to a loss of $1.4m in the year-ago quarter. Results include a loss from the aforementioned discontinued operations of $1.6m, against a similar loss of $749,000 for last year’s quarter. IMall is now concentrating its efforts on becoming a pure provider of e- commerce services to small and medium sized businesses. To that end, it has struck a deal with First Data Merchant Services Corp, a subsidiary of First Data Corp, in which that company has taken a $14m equity stake in IMall at $7 per share, consisting of an initial investment of $10.8m and an additional $3.2m subject to shareholder approval. The two will jointly offer a full array of internet commerce services to FDMS’ clients and their nearly 2 million merchants. IMall says the 10-year deal allows it to offer a unique comprehensive service including storefront design and building, site hosting, payment-enabling electronic commerce functionality and online merchant application processing. It believes the market for that kind of one-stop shop for small and medium sized merchants will explode and figures it will be well poised to lead it. The company is also banking on significant revenue from its recently-announced Stuff.com shopping portal and product-level search engine. The site is targeted at consumer as well as merchants looking to sell their products online. IMall figures it can count on a three separate revenue streams – a percentage of sales from merchants, advertising revenue and residual revenue from selling its other services to users of the portal.
