Cobalt Group Adds Inventory Services

The Cobalt Group Inc. Friday
souped up its services to the automotive industry by acquiring IntegraLink Inc., a provider of
advanced data extraction and reporting
services, for approximately $3.6 million in cash and stock.

Cobalt (CBLT)
currently provides a variety of Internet tools for car manufacturers and
dealers such as Web development and hosting, data management and online car
referral services. With the acquisition, the company said it wil be able to
add automated data collection operations for its customers.

IntegraLink specializes in collecting, normalizing and enhancing service
records, vehicle sales and inventory data, parts sales and inventory data.

“We can use the Internet to create tremendous value for our customers by
aggregating service records, parts and vehicle sales and inventory
data, and other information about dealership operations,” said John Holt,
co-chief executive officer of The Cobalt Group.

“Our automotive
manufacturer and dealer group clients are asking us to collect and analyze
this data, and we are also aggressively adding to our data collection
capabilities to increase the depth of information on our forthcoming
Motorplace.com business-to-business automotive portal. IntegraLink’s
employees, technology, and existing clients strongly support both of these
strategic initiatives.”