All my numbers were gathered from public earnings releases on Scripps and Scripps Network Interactive. I was careful to double check my numbers, but I found some discrepancies in the releases which I can’t explain. Remember, I’m not a financial analyst. If you’d like the raw numbers I worked off of, please email me.
Shopzilla is one of the few major shopping engines for which we still have transparency into financial results as Scripps Networks Interactive breaks out Shopzilla results.
Here’s the relevant information from the press release:
Interactive Services revenue was $49.0 million compared with $65.3 million in the year-ago quarter.
Segment expenses decreased 13 percent to $39.0 million.
Segment profit was $10.1 million compared with $20.3 million.
The company’s initiatives to reposition and differentiate Shopzilla’s products continue to show positive trends. Leads to Shopzilla merchant partners in the quarter grew 11 percent year over year. The lead volume metric is important because it measures the value Shopzilla is delivering to its direct merchant partners, as well as the level of engagement that consumers are having with the core content on its branded comparison shopping Web sites at bizrate.com and Shopzilla.com.
For full year 2009, Shopzilla had revenues of aprx. $180m.
For comparison sake, revenues for Shopzilla in Q2 – Q4 2008 were aprx. $175m. Note that this doesn’t include Q1 2008. In that quarter, the Interactive division – with uSwitch – had revenues of $77.5m. I can’t find Q1 2008 numbers for Shopzilla alone, so I’ll be extremely conservative and say that uSwitch contributed 15% of revenues, which means that Shopzilla would have had revenues of aprx. $66m, bringing total revenue for Shopzilla for 2008 to aprx. $240m.
For full year 2009, Shopzilla had segment profit of aprx. 30.8m.
For comparison sake, I have to do similar math to the above to figure out what Q1 profit for Shopzilla would have been. I’ll say that uSwitch contributed 20% of Q1 2008 profit, which means that Shopzilla would have had profit of 16.8m in Q1 2008. That would bring total profit for Shopzilla for 2008 to aprx. $61.5m.
So what were the effects of the recession on Shopzilla?
Shopzilla went from revenues of $240m and profit of $61.5m in 2008 to revenues of $180m and profit of $30.8m in 2009.
And does Scripps Network Interactive expect Shopzilla to have a resounding rebound in 2010?
According to the press release, not exactly. 2010 guidance is for “Segment profit from the company’s Shopzilla comparison shopping business is expected to be $33 million to $35 million.”
Posted by Brian Smith 
