Lycos Inc claimed in the statement accompanying its first quarter results announced after the markets closed yesterday that the company had far exceeded Wall Street’s estimates of every key metric, which, while it is true its first quarter losses were one cent a share less than most analysts expected, it is hardly far in excess of expectations. Web hyperbole aside, it was a pretty significant quarter for the portal as it was the one in which it purchased Wired Digital for $83m in stock (10/07/98). That deal is expected to close in January. The Waltham, Massachusetts company saw first quarter net losses of $14.7m, including a $15.4m one-time charge for in-process research and development and a $10.1m gain on sale of the company’s stake in PlanetAll, which was acquired recently by Amazon.com Inc in August (08/05/98). Without the charge or gain, the losses were $2.6m, or six cents per share – Wall Street expected a seven cents loss, according to First Call. Revenues in the quarter were $24.8m, up 30% from the prior quarter and 166% from a year ago. The Lycos Network, as the company likes to call its stable of web properties these days, now includes Lycos, Tripod, WhoWhere/AngelFire and Wired Digital. In terms of page views, Lycos was getting 36 million a day, up from 24 million in July, but the recent figure has added WhoWhere.com, the acquisition of which closed in August and comparing the numbers without that, page views rose 26% over the prior quarter. Chief financial and operating officer Ted Philip says the company is already well on the way to consolidating the WhoWhere staff with those at Lycos, and eventually the company plans to have just two data centers, one on each coast. It has just begun integrating the Wired Digital staff into the greater Lycos. Lycos says it expects plenty more commerce partners in the near future but Davis emphasizes that it’s not trying to create a ‘mall’ concept at its portal, which has become something of a dirty word on the web. David says shoppers this cyber-Christmas on Lycos will be shopping in a contextual experience, which is web-blather for only offering commerce services on subject- specific sites. Cash as of October 31 stood at $140.8m.
