Unilever shares were up a ha'penny at 525 Some that were basically marketing machines are now going the other way and moving into the technology field. And they need to provide advertisers with ever more subtle ways of getting their message in front of millions of pairs of eyes.The scramble to attract advertisers in this booming market is behind the ever more complex relationships developing between the search engines themselves. With so many people using search engines they have become an advertisers' paradise. And where there are advertisers there are revenues to be had.Whit Andrews, a research director of Gartner, the technology analysts, said: "If you do an online search then you are essentially taking a cable and projecting it into your forehead and telling advertisers more honestly than any other way what it is you want to know exactly."The priorities for search engines now are to differentiate themselves in terms of technology, and the sophistication they can offer users. But in the fiercely competitive search engine world there are others even bigger and more impressive than this Or at least we think there are. Terry Semel, the Yahoo! chairman and chief executive, said fourth quarter sales were $663.9m compared with $285m the year before and operating income for the full year was $295.7m compared with $88.2m in 2002. "Quarter four was another great quarter capping off a great year," said Mr Berkowitz.But if you thought the Ask Jeeves results were impressive you should adjust your search criteria and ask the question about profits of Yahoo!, the rival quoted search engine that announced results two weeks ago. Sales at the company were $107.3m compared with $65m the year before and in the fourth quarter alone Ask Jeeves sales were up 58 per cent to $31.8m. Constantly asked by sceptics whether it would ever make money, the PG Wodehouse inspired business based in Emeryville, California, produced the clearest result this week. Steve Berkowitz, the chief executive, announced that 2003 income was $22m compared with a $5.4m loss in 2002. Ask Jeeves, the internet search engine, has come up with the best answer of all. The Irish cosmetics company rejected a 31p-a-share bid from its former finance director last autumn, and there is speculation his backers may be back for another go The shares ticked up tuppence to 24p.. And renewed bid speculation drove shares in Ashtead, the little plant hire group, up 3p to 25p.There was some interesting buying of IWP International shares. And CustomVis was up a penny at 78.5p on excitement over its new laser eye surgery equipment.London Clubs International, the gaming group, won a 2.5p rise to 101p amid gossip that it is close to a vital refinancing of its debts.
And while Findel, the school stationery wholesaler, was being rumoured to have a bullish trading update coming soon, its shares were 1.75p lower at 329.5p.There were upgrades for Gyrus, the keyhole surgery equipment group, after a strong trading update banished some of the worries raised by profit warnings last year Its shares were 4p better at 193.5p. Shares in RM, the software-for-schools group, held steady at 145p after appointing Mike Tomlinson, the former head of the schools inspectorate Ofsted, to its board. Wembley, which has received a 750p-a-share bid, fell back to below that price in early trading but bounced to end level at 755p where buyers continue to bet that MGM Mirage is about to face a rival for Wembley's hand.Nord Anglia, the education and training group, fell back 5p to 245p having been buoyed by buying from JO Hambro, which said it had raised its stake the previous day. And several investment houses cooled their enthusiasm for Stanley Leisure after the casino group's rise, fuelled by bid speculation, earlier this week Its shares fell 2p to 458p. InterContinental Hotels saw its shares rise 6.5p to 536.5p after Morgan Stanley abandoned its bearish stance. The stock has underperformed its sector by 20 per cent since last August and an improvement in the group's credit quality should allow it to start an £800m share buy-back programme, Morgan Stanley believes.Unilever shares were up a ha'penny at 525.5p on a broker upgrade from the US. The stock snapped back 14p to 138.5p as investors thought, variously, that things were not as bad as all that at the engineering contractor, or that things were so bad that it is only a matter of time before a break-up bid emerges.A few new brokers' circulars raised interest. Autonomy, the data sorting software house, fell 10.75p to 287p after its annual results proved slightly disappointing.The FTSE techMARK 100, set up in 1999 to measure New Economy shares, was off 23.02 at 1,088.4.There was more frenetic trading in Jarvis, with the dramatic sell-off of the previous two days giving way to, on balance, more buying yesterday. |
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