Sedo Holding AG : publishes financial results for the first half-year 2013

• Revenue growth of 5.9% to EUR 70.5 million (previous year: EUR 66.6 million)
• EBT: EUR 2.4 million (EBT 2012 before one-offs: EUR 2.7 million)
• Outlook unchanged: Rising revenue and earnings contributions for 2013
  
  

Cologne, August 14, 2013 - Sedo Holding AG (ISIN DE0005490155) has today published its consolidated financial results for the first half-year 2013. With a revenue growth of 5.9% the Company is in line with its forecast. Total Group revenue was up from EUR 66.6 million in the previous year to EUR 70.5 million. This growth was particularly driven by the Affiliate Marketing segment, which can look back on a successful first half-year due to its internationalization and major customer strategy. The Domain Marketing segment remained confronted by the challenges of a contracting market and strong competition from price-aggressive providers, which is why the revenue decline continued, as expected.

In the Domain Marketing segment, EUR 13.7 million of sales revenue was generated during the first six months of 2013, a decline of 17.0% compared with the previous year's EUR 16.5 million. The number of domains tradable on the platform rose to 17.0 million as of June 30, 2013 compared with 14.9 million as of December 31, 2012. As of the reporting date around 4.4 million domains (December 31, 2012: 3.8 million) were available for advertising marketing in the area of performance-based domain parking. Both revenue and the related earnings decline within Domain Marketing reflect the overall contraction of the domain parking market. The domain trading area remained stable at the previous year's level, by contrast. With regard to this area, the Company anticipates additional impulses to come from trading with the new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs), which are starting successively from the fourth quarter of 2013.

In the Affiliate Marketing segment, on the other hand, revenue reported marked growth of 13.4% during the first six months of 2013, rising from EUR 50.1 million to EUR 56.8 million. The number of partner programs increased by more than 5% during the first half of 2013 to 3,023, and the number of connected websites by 1.8% to 571,000. This positive trend is to be seen as the result of the expansion of the business with major customers and our internationalization. At the same time, the greater automation of processes, the optimization of sales and the expansion of service quality are becoming increasingly noticeable in terms of our operating earnings. The Company generated additional added values for its customers with the review of its technical platform for Affiliate Marketing.

Despite the positive revenue and earnings trends in Affiliate Marketing the effects of the fall in Domain Marketing couldn't be offset at Group level as expected, which means that overall earnings figures in the period under review were below the previous year's level. Specifically, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and write-downs on domains (EBITDA) fell to EUR 2.9 million in the first half of 2013 compared with EUR 3.3 million in the previous year. Accordingly, earnings before taxes (EBT) were down from EUR 2.7 million in the previous year period (excluding EUR 60.2 million of negative one-offs resulting from impairment losses) to EUR 2.4 million. Earnings per share (EPS) stood at EUR 0.04 in the first half of 2013 - compared with EUR -1.94 of EPS in the previous year period, which were burdened by the aforementioned impairment losses.

Sedo Holding AG lies within the scope of its budgets with the revenue and earnings growth trends that it achieved in the first half of 2013, and continues to expect revenue growth of around 10% for the full 2013 year - driven especially by the Affiliate Marketing business - compared with the 2012 financial year (2012 revenue: EUR 132.7 million), and earnings before taxes of between EUR 4.0 million and EUR 5.0 million.

*      EBITDA, i.e. earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and write-downs on domains
**    EBT before one-offs, i.e. before goodwill impairment losses applied to the Sedo subgroup cash-generating unit (CGU) and at the affilinet France CGU