On Wednesday night investors got a closer look at what kind of company will be left standing when Roxio (NASDAQ:ROXI) morphs itself from its current form as a downloadable-music and consumer-media-software company into a pure-play Napster online music company. Based on the nearly 5% appreciation in its shares in yesterday's trading, they liked what they saw.
This summer the company announced plans to sell its software division, which offers programs that can be used to mix and burn CDs and DVDs, to Sonic Solutions (NASDAQ:SNIC). That deal is expected to close by the end of the company's fiscal year -- it just reported first-half results through Sept. 30 on Wednesday -- and already has government clearance: A shareholder vote is all the approval that's left.
That would seem to be a rubber stamp based on the market's acceptance of Wednesday's numbers, which afforded them a better glimpse into the kind of company they'll own when Roxio becomes Napster and adopts the "NAPS" ticker full-time. Napster revenues, about a third of the company's current business, grew 18% to $9.3 million from their Q1 figures. Annualize that, and you've got perhaps $10 million of gross profit on $40 million in revenues -- not a bad place to start.
Granted, Napster will surely start out as a money-losing company in a competitive space where it will compete with everyone from Apple Computer's (NASDAQ:AAPL) well-known and big-spending -- did you see those U2 advertisements? -- iTunes to Virgin Music to offerings from Sony (NYSE:SNE), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), and beyond. That challenge won't go away.
But its balance sheet, as Rick Aristotle Munarriz noted in August, will be refreshed with cash -- and stock in the Sonic venture -- and its business will be energized by its independence. It looks like a company that will represent an interesting opportunity for investors who are looking for a pure play in the downloading business -- and who make sure to take time to understand the financial dynamics of what they're getting into.
Fool contributor Dave Marino-Nachison doesn't own any of the companies in this story.
