ComparisonEngines

Shopping.com (NASDAQ: SHOP) is up 5% intraday on a Deutsche Bank upgrade (to hold from sell). The stock is now back where it was prior to its earnings announcement on April 27, and up 20% from a low of $12.90 on April 29.

I’m trying to get my hands on the Deutsche Bank research, but the wires report that “the current multiples reflect the market’s concerns regarding traffic, growth prospects, reinvestment versus margin expansion and competition. The broker told clients that operating margin expansion may be limited in the near term as the company invests in international expansion. ” The broker went on to say that Deutsche Bank thinks brand advertising in the US might be a better investment than international expansion.

I spoke with Dan Ciporin by phone on May 9th. I met Dan quickly at the first Shopping.com merchant summit which the company hosted near its headquarters in Brisbane, CA April 20-21. As I was at the event as a merchant*, I will not report on the content of the merchant summit, but I will say that I was impressed with the quality of the Shopping.com team. Here’s what Dan had to say.

My comments are indented.

On click fraud: “Click fraud is definitely an issue with PPC search engines, and there is a lot of it out there. However, we got a jump on it years ago. At this point, we have lots of mechanisms in place to catch it, and we’ve implemented measuring tools that we think are accurate. If anything, we may over-filter.” Read the rest of this entry »

Shopping.com (NASDAQ: SHOP) is up 8% today on nearly double its average daily volume. The only news out of the company is a SEC filing announcing that the CTO sold 904 shares of stock, leaving his holdings at 526,457 shares.

In general, it’s been a strong day for internet stocks.

SHOP dropped after releasing earnings late last month, at which time many analysts were concerned about rising online marketing costs. Since then, however, the company launched its mortgate comparison section, presented at the Piper Jaffray 7th Annual Technology Conference (click on the link to listen to the webcast), and had an interview with TheStreet.com touting its international expansion. Other positive notes of interest include: 1) total cash per share sitting near $5 and 2) the upcoming launch of its hotel comparison section.