The e-commerce market drove a solid set of results for Verity Inc, the knowledge retrieval software firm. The company recorded a fourth-quarter profit up 390% at $5m on revenue that rose 46.7% to $19.2m. Earnings per share of $0.34 were comfortably above First Call analyst expectations of $0.25 and represent an increase of $425%. For the 12 months, net income was $12.1m, against last year’s $16.5m loss, while revenue for the year grew 65.7% to $64.4m.
UK managing director Mark Neil attributes Verity’s prosperity to the maturing of the markets for corporate web sites and internet trade. Verity introduced its Profiler product in Q2 last year, and Knowledge Organizer in Q1 this year, tools which help companies organize and classify the data which they receive from potential customers visiting a web page. The company has traditionally sold to the pharmaceutical, chemical and financial services markets but, increasingly, the firm’s e-commerce functionality is seeing business from retailers.
