UK online business information supplier, Maid Plc is confident growth will continue throughout the remainder of the year after a strong first half. Maid reported a 46.5% increase in revenue to 14.0m pounds, while net profits were 2.0m pounds, recovering from losses of 3.4m pounds last year. Chairman Michael Mander said that both direct sales, and revenue generated from its existing alliances, had been encouraging. Maid is providing its internet- based business services to CompuServe Corp, and has forged alliances with the South China Morning Post, 4th Communication Network and iafrica, the online African news service, and Mander says combined revenues from these partnerships totaled 1.1m pounds in the second quarter, 400% up on the previous half. But Maid won’t see revenues from its recently signed alliance with Digital Equipment Corp’s AltaVista Internet software subsidiary, under which its InfoSort data engine will be integrated into the AltaVista internet search technology (CI No 3,135) until customers use it in corporate intranets. Maid is also acquiring a 70% stake in Muscat Ltd, a Cambridge, UK-based information retrieval vendor, for 5.6m pounds. Muscat will provide tools to enable Maid’s InfoSort technology to be installed on single personal computers.
