QXL and 365 offer hope for dotcom revival

Two internet companies provided encouraging news to the UK's suffering dotcom market today, announcing increases in revenue and traffic.

European online auctioneer QXL set its sights on toppling rival eBay, after seeing its registered user figures double during the past 12 months.

The company, which this month merged with German auction firm ricardo.de, announced it had more than 610,000 members on 30 April 2000 and following the merger will have a combined membership of 1.5 million.

QXL's revenue hit £2.18m for the quarter ending 31 March 2000, up from £1.55m from the same period last year.

However, QXL is still making a loss. Before exceptional items, the company's operating loss for the whole year soared from £2.1m to £32.8m, and pre-tax losses rose from £2.1m to £31m.

Robert Dighero, QXL's chief financial officer, said: "The growth that we have demonstrated, together with the proposed acquisitions, put us in a prime position to capitalise on the fast-growing European online auction market opportunity."

Internet content provider 365, whose websites include football365.com and music365.com, also announced that its number of unique users has risen to 1.81 million in April this year, and that these numbers are continuing to grow.

Revenue for 365's fourth quarter ending 31 March 2000 was £7.3m - 30 per cent up from £5.6m in the previous quarter. The company saw profit for the 12 months ending 31 March rise to £14.6m, compared with £1.1m for the eight months to 31 March 1999.

Dan Thompson, chief executive at 365, said the consumer and business divisions of the company had performed strongly over the year. Turnover from the consumer division was £14.7m, with £7.7m from the business division.

According to Thompson, the growth of the number of consumer division users to 1.75 million, makes 365 one of the largest European providers of digital content.