TheStreet Posts Third-Quarter Profit as Revenue Rises 14%
TheStreet (TST) - Get Report , owner of the flagship web site and The Deal, reported a profit for the third quarter as revenue rose 14%, to $16.7 million, from a year ago.
Profit was $400,000, or one cent per share, compared to a two cent loss from a year ago. Shares of the New York-based media company closed Wednesday at $1.44.
TheStreet reported $13.7 million in revenue from subscriptions, newsletters and other services, an increase of 17% from a year earlier. Advertising sales grew 2% to $3 million. Web site traffic rose 26% during the first nine months of 2015.
TheStreet posted operating income of $629,000, compared to a loss of $494,000 from a year ago, and ended the third quarter with $30.3 million in cash and cash equivalents.
"The third quarter showed expected improvement in our business," TheStreet Chairman and CEO Elisabeth DeMarse said in a statement. "We continue to execute on our strategic plan, focusing on growth opportunities in business-to-business subscription revenues, while maintaining our footprint in consumer businesses."
The number of subscriptions fell 5.8% from a year ago to 77,800. The drop "was expected" because the promotion of Jim Cramer's Get Rich Carefully a year ago help boost subscriptions during that quarter, the company said.
Average revenue per user, or ARPU, fell 1.3% from a year ago and declined 0.6% from the second quarter. Average monthly churn, or customer turnover, was 4.6% for the quarter compared to 3.3% for a year ago.