DoubleClick Sees a Mixed Picture

The company boosts profit forecasts but cuts its top-line guidance.

Author:: George Mannes
Publish date:: Apr 11, 2002 6:20 PM EDT

DoubleClick

(DCLK)

beat bottom-line expectations after a day of getting hammered by fallout from

Yahoo!

(YHOO)

The Internet advertising firm raised pro forma profit expectations for the second quarter but said its divestiture of certain operations would lower revenue below current expectations.

DoubleClick's stock fell $1.18, or 10.6%, to close at $9.98 Thursday, before its release of quarterly financials. The company evidently got tangled in the coattails of Yahoo!, whose good-but-not-great results announced Wednesday dragged its shares down more than 16%. In after-hours trading, DoubleClick's shares were little changed.

For the first quarter ended March 31, DoubleClick reported revenue of $83.7 million, down from $114.9 million in the first quarter of 2001 and slightly off the $84.2 million mean forecast of the analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial/First Call.

Pro forma earnings per share amounted to a penny, compared with an 8-cent loss a year earlier. Analysts had been expecting a 4-cent loss.

Including amortization of intangibles, certain nonrecurring charges and other items, DoubleClick reported a loss of $6 million, or 4 cents a share, much smaller than the year-ago loss of $60.4 million, or 48 cents a share.