You're selling online text ads that work. Your industry's pioneer -- Overture -- just got bought out by Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO). The leader in your niche -- Google -- just happens to be a popular company that is rumored to be going public early next year at a lofty proposed market cap well north of $10 billion. In a dot-com world of deficit-ridden failures you've been profitable since the summer of 2001.
You're FindWhat.com (NASDAQ:FWHT), but you're definitely not a household word.
That suits FindWhat just fine. Last night, it posted another strong quarter and boosted its full-year profit guidance, yet the name still doesn't roll off the tip of your tongue, does it? Through the first nine months of the year, the company has seen its pre-tax profits climb by 80% on a 74% surge in revenue, but the market just isn't interested in an online advertiser serving the mid-tier market, now is it?
When Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced that it would sever ties with rival LookSmart (NASDAQ:LOOK) or when FindWhat wanted to renegotiate the terms of a pending merger with Europe's eSpotting after it started digging deeper into financials, then you may have heard of FindWhat -- on the down days.
But LookSmart made up nearly two-thirds of Microsoft's business. FindWhat is so diversified that even Terra's (NASDAQ:TRLY) popular Lycos portal makes up less than 10% of FindWhat's revenue base.
FindWhat is now looking to earn $0.50 a share this year on $70 million in revenue. While it still needs more clarity before releasing its outlook for next year -- and the company suspending the reporting of some of its key metrics is not comforting -- it is growing nicely in a highly promising field. You don't grow the top line sequentially for 16 consecutive quarters in a sector that isn't booming.
Can you be the right stock at the right place even if you don't have the right name? FindWhat is inching its way out of obscurity, but with the shares appreciating fivefold over the past year, maybe you don't need fame to go with fortune.
