Wall Street is wrong about Dice Holdings (NYSE:DHX).
This morning's quarterly report from the career-specific website operator was another gem. Revenue inched 17% higher to $40.3 million. Earnings, before a pair of one-time accounting benefits, roughly tripled to $0.09 a share. Analysts were looking for a profit of $0.08 a share on $40.2 million in revenue.
What did Mr. Market do? It ignored Dice, the way it typically has since the company went public at $13 last summer. The stock opened just 1% higher on the welcome news, and gradually ticked slightly upward.
Dice has lived up to the hype. It has now beaten Wall Street's profit targets in three of its first four quarters as a public company, proving that it can grow in this uncertain workplace environment. That's saying a lot, when you consider Dice's rather unique model.
Dice isn't like Monster Worldwide's (NASDAQ:MNST) Monster.com or Yahoo!'s (NASDAQ:YHOO) HotJobs, running conventional workplace recruiting sites. It operates sector-specific websites, like Dice.com for tech job listings, ClearanceJobs.com for folks with active security clearance, and eFinancialCareers.com in the financial services space.
Dice also likes to pepper its offerings with community-based features. Dice.com bills itself as "the career hub for tech insiders," so it goes beyond sector listings to include industry news and a lively discussion board. It may not be the kind of virtual networking that you'll find on more community-driven industry sites like those owned by Jupitermedia (NASDAQ:JUPM), or CBS's (NYSE:CBS) TechRepublic, but it's certainly a far cry from the mainstream recruitment titans.
Obviously, I'm in the minority in my appreciation for Dice. The stock has shed more than a third of last year's IPO price, despite its nearly unblemished streak of topping the Street. Earlier this month, Wachovia Capital Markets downgraded the stock, concerned over how its eFinancialCareers website will hold up in this dicey banking environment. As it turns out, eFinancialCareers.com -- which only makes up a quarter of the company's revenue mix -- was credited alongside the strength of moving recruitment packages through Dice.com as the two major factors in driving this past quarter's growth.
Besides, given the terrible earnings report out of Wachovia Bank (NYSE:WB) this week, it won't be long before many of Wachovia's hires warm up to eFinancialCareers.
Keep rolling, Dice. You'll get the last laugh.
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