Friday, April 11, 2008

PlanetOut Sells Advocate and Out To here!

PlanetOut Corporation has agreed to sell the Advocate and Out magazines to a subsidiary of here! television for six million dollars in order to focus its corporate energy on its websites planetout.com and gay.com.
Joe.My.God had the heads up and has generally had excellent coverage about the business travails of the first corporation exclusively catering to the LGBT community to be listed and traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange (symbol: LGBT).

There are some interesting details in the business reports about PlanetOut's sale of its publishing business to the gay and lesbian premium cable network. For example:

The company's online segment has been contributing less to its revenue for each of the last three years. In 2005 it accounted for 87 percent, in 2006 54 percent, and in 2007 51 percent. Magazine publishing's portion of total revenue rose in each of those years, from 13 percent in 2005 to 46 percent in 2006 and 49 percent in 2007.

[...]

Last week, PlanetOut (NASDAQ: LGBT) put Expedia Inc. (NASDAQ: EXPE) in charge of travel booking on its web sites.

[...]

In February, PlanetOut reported a $51.2 million loss for 2007. The company's accumulated deficit on Dec. 31, 2007 was about $89.5 million.

[...]

The company had 237 employees at the end of 2007.

Full disclosure: over 10 years ago (in 1996) Mad Professah used to be on the Board of Directors of PlanetOut Corporation (prior to the merger with gay.com). And no, I don't have any stock!

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