HERALD SCOTLAND – May 16 – Shares of Cupid have retreated towards the 60p price they listed on the stock exchange three years ago after the Edinburgh-based group came under renewed attack from short sellers. They are now down 16.3% since the start of May. Cupid's pre-tax profit rose 31% to £9.2M in 2012.
by Tim Sharp
See full article at Herald Scotland
REUTERS – Mar 25 – Cupid rejected as "misrepresentation and ill-informed speculation" media allegations about its methods to encourage people to buy subscriptions, sending its shares up as much as 79%. The shares fell 60% on Friday in response to the statement. Up to Friday's close, the stock had fallen 64% since the BBC report on Feb. 24. Ukraine newspaper Kyiv Post published an article on March 15 that said Cupid had hired "motivation managers" to encourage people to buy full subscriptions. Cupid said that the managers' job was to monitor and interrogate its websites to detect technical or product issues and to moderate chat rooms and forums. They do not communicate with free members, it said.
by Richa Naidu
See full article at Reuters
SCOTSMAN – Mar 24 – The collapse in the share price of Cupid on Friday has stoked speculation it will be snapped up by IAC. The shares dropped 57% to 49p, wiping more than £40M off its value in a matter of hours. The plunge came after it responded to allegations posted by a blogger and a Ukrainian newspaper that suggested the company lured men to hand over credit card details with “fake” potential female daters. Svitlana Tuchynska, a journalist for the Ukrainian newspaper Kyiv Post, said that during an undercover job interview she was told the role involved posing as a female user of the dating site and encouraging male users to buy memberships.
by Erikka Askeland and Perry Gourley
See full article at Scotsman
HERALD SCOTLAND – Mar 22 – Shares in Cupid have plunged by 40% today as the company was again mired in allegations about the way it entices customers to subscribe. Cupid, which operates sites such as Be Naughty and Girls Date for Free, has faced allegations that customers have been lured into subscribing to its sites after receiving messages from users who later disappeared. Cupid confirmed to investors that it employed a “motivation team” of 24 people. But it insisted that it does not communicate with members operating under free access. The company said it does contact new paying subscribers “to help them get the most out of the site”.
by Tim Sharp
See full article at Herald Scotland
THE MOTLEY FOOL – Mar 8 – The shares of Cupid climbed 3p to 120p during early trading this morning after CEO Bill Dobbie revealed he had invested £1M in his firm. This week, Cupid's 2012 results showed sales up 51% to £81M.
by Maynard Patton
See full article at The Motley Fool
HERALD SCOTLAND – Mar 6 – Cupid has ordered a confidence-building independent audit of its member database. The move comes a month after the airing of claims that customers were lured into paying subscriptions to Cupid sites after receiving messages from users who disappeared when they signed up. Cupid will also seek an independent audit of its customers' experiences.
by Tim Sharp
See full article at Herald Scotland
REUTERS – Mar 5 – Cupid Plc's profits rose 31%. Cupid Plc reported pretax profit of 9.2M pounds ($13.9M), compared to 7M in 2011. Cupid said it wooed 1.78M new subscribers to its websites last year, with particularly strong growth in France and the U.S. Revenues for 2012 increased by 51% to 80.9M pounds. Cupid's share price slid ~28% in February, the biggest monthly fall since the company was floated on London's junior AIM market in June 2010. Last month, the BBC published a report featuring claims from members who said that they suspected that fake communications had been used to encourage them to buy subscriptions. Cupid denied the claims and said that it only acted "in a legal and appropriate manner".
BBC.CO.UK – Feb 24 – Customers of Cupid plc have voiced concerns that they may have been lured into paying subscriptions by potential dates who did not exist. Men who signed up to a number of sites owned by Cupid plc said that flirty messages they received as free members rapidly tailed off when they became paid-up subscribers. Cupid plc said it did created staff profiles, but only for "the express purpose of monitoring the site for quality assurance and moderation purposes". It categorically denied the company sent communications in order to tempt free members to pay subscriptions.
THE DAILY BEAST – Feb 14 – Different countries date differently. Cupid Plc burned a lot of money when it tried to expand its BeNaughty website with becoquin.fr in France and gibsmir.de in Germany. Match.com sold its entire European business to the French site Meetic.com. These companies were sometimes felled by practical idiosyncrasies such as offering credit cards as the sole payment method in Europe, not knowing that only 25% of Germans own them. Australians take a more relaxed approach to dating. “In Australia you can never really be sure if you are on a date or you are just hanging out as friends,” says Katrina, an Australian who spent a year in Texas. Taiwan offers a more conservative scene. Potential partners are mainly set up through friends, and romance must be found within one’s social circle. Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personals Watch, predicts that the Chinese online dating industry alone will generate $350M in revenue in 2014, and forecasts growth in developing markets such as Russia and Latin America. Gian Gonzaga, chief scientist for eHarmony, sent out thousands of questionnaires in countries including Brazil, Australia, and the U.S. “We found Brazilian couples value passion the most,” Gonzaga says. “The importance of similar levels of spirituality is highest in the States.” eHarmony then adjusted its websites’ algorithms to reflect Gonzaga’s findings.
by Ella Delany
See full article at Daily Beast
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TELEGRAPH.CO.UK – Feb 8 – Investors have fallen out of love with Cupid.com after a BBC radio show started investigating the company as part of a programme about the online dating world. Cupid was forced to tell the stock market it was under scrutiny after shares crashed by as much as 13pc in morning trading. The radio programme will air on BBC Radio 5 Live on Sunday. Cupid would not disclose details of the investigation. However, it is thought to focus on the issue of scammers who set up fake profiles on dating sites, and ask whether online dating businesses do enough to protect their customers.