Search Engine’s Earnings Excite Investors

Excite Inc. gave
investors something to cheer about Thursday after releasing
better-than-expected third-quarter earnings and a three-fold increase in
revenues.

The company reported a loss of $6.8 million, or 14 cents a diluted share,
up from a loss of $8.2 million, or 27 cents a diluted share, a year ago.
Revenues skyrocketed to $44 million from just under $16 million a year ago.

Excluding one-time acquisition costs and charges associated with its deal
with Netscape Communications Corp. for placement on Netcenter, Excite
earned $1.3 million, or 2 cents a diluted share. That’s substantially
better than forecasts which had projected a 2-cent loss.

Excite said it will pay the $56.8 million that will go to Netscape in the
Netcenter deal over two years, which will result in a charge of $7.6
million, or 15 cents a share, during each quarter of the two-year deal
which ends April 30, 2000.

For the first time, the company also reported a break-even cash flow.
Excite also booked $64 million in new business over the quarter. The
company said 993 advertisers had booked space on Excite and its search
engine WebCrawler, which it also owns.

Traffic across the company’s network increased to 50 million a day by the
end of the quarter, up 15 percent from the second quarter.

“We are pleased with the strong revenue and bookings growth this quarter
and especially proud of achieving profitability on a pro forma basis.
Achieving break-even cash flow from operations for the first time was an
even more important financial milestone,” said Excite Chief Executive
Officer George Bell.