Despite missing on earnings, investors gave Dice Holdings a bye this morning, liking the revenue numbers it posted for the 4th quarter of 2013 as well as what the company sees for this year.
Some slowing in the niche job board company’s security clearances jobs site (ClearanceJobs.com) was more than offset by gains in other areas, and by contributions from the sites Dice acquired when it bought onTargetjobs last fall and the IT Job Board in July. Improvement in the finance sector in Europe and Asia staunched the decline in revenue at eFinancialCareers.
“In the fourth quarter, we delivered better revenue and profitability than we thought we would in October, particularly from improvement in our finance segment,” said Dice CFO, John Roberts.
These factors combined boosted the company’s 4th quarter revenue to $58.4 million, an 11% improvement over the same quarter in 2012 and more than $4 million ahead of Wall Street’s expected $53.8 million. On that news and on the strength of management’s expectation that the current quarter and the full year will see revenue well above Wall Street’s consensus estimates sent Dice stock up 7.4% in early afternoon trading.
The company reported a 4th quarter loss of 11 cents a share versus analysts’ estimates it would earn 12 cents. Excluding such one time charges as a nearly $15 million charge off of goodwill and other intangibles, primarily due to its Slashdot property, Dice would have earned 8 cents a share, still less than the estimate.
President and CEO Mike Durney said during a conference call with analysts that 2014 would see the company focus on aggressively focus efforts on improving mobile access to its sites and strengthening the integration of the new properties it acquired last year. He also noted that Dice’s innovative tech sourcing tool Open Web is out of beta and gaining traction.
Because of the acquisitions, Dice reorganized its revenue categories, adding hospitality and healthcare as new reporting segments.