Rediff.com (NASDAQ:REDF), one of the most hyped-up Internet portals, reported fourth-quarter and fiscal 2006 results Tuesday night. Revenues for the quarter were about $5 million, and for the year they were about $18 million, each up roughly 48% over 2005 numbers. The company ended the year in the black to the tune of $1.2 million. But does strong revenue growth and profitability make Rediff the next Google (NASDAQ:GOOG)? I don't think so.
The company gained a bit of notoriety a few months back when Jim Cramer proclaimed it the Google of India on his popular show Mad Money. The stock then gained 50% in the next two weeks, suddenly collapsing to the low 20s before the latest earnings report, which drove the company down another 15% in trading Tuesday. It's not hard to see why investors are fleeing the stock.
For one thing, Rediff's market cap has been around $486 million, giving the company a price-to-sales ratio of 27. That would be almost fathomable if the company were even growing at triple-digit rates, or deriving all of its sales from online advertising, but only two-thirds of its revenue is from there. A third of its revenues are from slow-growth offline newspapers, and the only triple-digit number related to the company is its P/E ratio. This is compared with competitors like Sina (NASDAQ:SINA), which trades at only eight times sales, and even the great Google, at 16 times sales. It seems the only things holding this stock up are unfounded growth expectations that have yet to turn into realizable gains.
It's perplexing to me that while Internet access in India is rising exponentially, this company cannot monetize it. After all, Rediff has been around for more than a decade and has more than 43 million registered users, but ended the year with only $20 million in revenues. It has only 156 advertisers, with the top 10 making up almost 50% of its revenues. In comparison, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) ran a test run for its new AdCenter a while back, with about 6,000 advertisers.
I understand that the site has strong brand name recognition with Indians and is one of the most popular Indian sites on the Web, and Alexa ranks it 90th in the world. However, that has not translated to attracting advertisers to the site. I'm not surprised, given the more credible alternatives, that Google India and Yahoo! India (NASDAQ:YHOO) present. For now, investors might be Foolish to run like heck from this stock, or at the very least wait for more credible growth prospects before jumping in.
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Sina was recommended in Motley Fool Stock Advisor; Microsoft was recommended in Inside Value. Be our guest at the website or discussion board of any of our newsletters.
Fool contributor Stephen Ellis does not own shares in any companies mentioned.
