BLOOMBERG – Dec 13 – Easydate is changing its name to Cupid after budget airline easyJet's parent group claimed a trademark infringement. Easydate takes the new moniker from the recently purchased business Cupid.com.
The full article was originally published at Bloomberg, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Wise move. Cupid will sit better with investors as well, I'm sure.
SHARECAST – Nov 29 - Easydate non-executive Martin Higginson has taken advantage of the recent strong trading statement from the online dating company to sell nearly all of his shares. At the beginning of October, Higginson exercised options over 398,600 shares. He did not own any shares before then and he has sold 398,000 shares at 95p each, raising Ł378,000. In the first nine months of 2010, revenues grew at 30% a quarter thanks to higher marketing spending. FULL ARTICLE @ SHARECAST
Mark Brooks: Que? In fact, he sold only 30% of his shares. Plus EasyDate's CFO bought shares.
MANDA DEALS – Nov 16 – Debuting on AIM in June with a £10M funding, Easydate hopes it can drive growth from its niche dating sites including planetsappho.com, maturedatinguk.com, and datingforparents.com. ‘We are in a very broad market", explains CEO Dobbie, "with people dating up to the age of 75. As a result, we try to provide variety." Going forwards, he says that Easydate should be able to generate growth by increasing its proportion of international customers, which he hopes will account for 50% of total sales. For the current year, house broker Cenkos forecasts profits of £5.1M on £20.9M sales, with profits of £8.5M and £11.4M pencilled in for 2011 and 2012 respectively. FULL ARTICLE @ MANDA DEALS
PR WEB – Nov 11 – A new mobile app from online dating service Easydate is #1 app in the Android download charts, according to Androidzoom. The recently launched mobile app version includes several new features, including a location based search feature which is a major hit. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB
INVESTEGATE – Nov 4 - Easydate has posted its 2009 Annual Report to shareholders. Easydate listed on AIM in June 2010 and has a base of ~13M registrants and ~9M members in 29 countries with a growing proportion of members coming from outside of the U.K. FULL ARTICLE @ INVESTIGATE
Mark Brooks: You can see pdf summaries of all the public internet dating companies financial performance on the right bar of OPW under 'Financials'.
PRESS RELEASE – Oct 20 - ‘The Cosmopolitan and Men’s Health Date Night’ is a brand extension of each of the publication’s respective dating sites. The first Date Night will take today (21st October) at Studio Valbonne in London. SpeedDater, the singles events company, is running the event on behalf of the two brands. If successful, the plan is to roll the date nights out across the country next year. Part of the EasyDate group of companies, SpeedDater is running ~70 events each month across the UK and Ireland.
Mark Brooks: White Label Dating serves cosmopolitan.co.uk/dating for Natmags.
DAILY MAIL – Oct 16 – EasyDate was founded five years ago by Bill Dobbie, an entrepreneurial Scot who already knew a fair bit about the potential of the internet, having set up and sold an online DVD rental business. Dobbie was looking for a new venture and hit on online dating. Since then, internet dating has mushroomed and EasyDate has developed into a company valued on the stock market at £85m. EasyDate operates in 29 countries and recently bought cupid.com in the US. ~20% of the group’s revenue comes from outside Britain and Dobbie hopes to increase that to 50% in the next few years. Analysts forecast rapid growth for the firm as profits are expected to more than double from £2.3M in 2009 to £5.2M this year and £8.5M in 2011. FULL ARTICLE @ DAILY MAIL
Mark Brooks: I made the intro for EasyDate to Cupid. ;-)
PRESS RELEASE – Sep 28 – EasyDate has extended its white label dating site offering to include events bookings, which means that their white label partners running sites on the platform will also be able to offer their members tickets to singles events in their nearest town or city. The events will not only be speed dating, but will also include wine tasting, party nights and a whole variety of interesting activities.
Mark Brooks: Watch out for Fastlife.com speed dating events running on their platform, along with EasyDate's own Speeddater parties.
FT – Sep 24 - Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of the EasyJet empire, has threatened action against online dating group Easydate in a row over alleged trademark infringement. Easydate, which trades under brands including benaughty.com, and girlsdateforfree.com, has been using the name for the five years since it launched. Sir Stelios, who licenses the “easy” name to businesses including EasyJet, EasyCar and EasyHotel, claimed Easydate was trying to pass itself off as part of the “easy” brand and warned it to change the company name. Easydate said it had consulted lawyers but would seek to resolve the issue out of court. FULL ARTICLE @ FINANCIAL TIMES
HERALD SCOTLAND – Sep 23 - Bill Dobbie, CEO of Easydate, is sitting on a £10.4M paper profit on his 32.5% stake in the company, less than three months after it listed on the stock exchange. Easydate shares soared 12p or 13.3% to 102.5p yesterday after it announced a maiden first-half profit of under £2M, compared to under £1M for the whole of 2009. Revenue from its sites, which include benaughty.com, girlsdateforfree.com and maturedating.co.uk, was £8.8M for the period, against £8.5M for the full year to Dec 2009. The company is now valued at £77M, £32M more than when it listed at 60p a share on June 30.
The full article was originally published at Herald Scotland, but is no longer available.