Christian dating inspires Cupid

Deputy Business Editor

Tuesday 4 September 2012

ONLINE dating company Cupid is considering expanding its range of niche sites to include religious themes after witnessing the popularity of Christian dating portals in America.

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Greig Cameron Deputy Business Editor

The Edinburgh business has a 2% share of the £800 million online dating market in the United States and recently opened a support services office in Dallas, Texas.

Cupid – which yesterday revealed a drop in half-year pre-tax profits from £3.94m to £3.65m in spite of a 51% rise in revenue to £38.6m – said it was also planning to open a larger US commercial base, which is likely to be in San Francisco, next year.

Bill Dobbie, chief executive, said: "The States is a pretty big market. Our trajectory makes us think we can certainly get a lot more there but it is just how long it would take us to get to around 10%. It would be great to do it organically and we think, depending on how the products go, it is not entirely unfeasible. "We would dearly love to try to find an acquisition in the States that would accelerate that and give us a bigger database to reduce the churn by having more people available in more states. "We have grown from £1m to £2m and more revenue per month in the States over the past 15 months so we are making great progress."An office in San Franciso will put us close to buying online marketing traffic more effectively and keep us at the forefront of innovation of our product and market trends."Mr Dobbie said he was also encouraged by progress in France where Cupid has around a 10% market share but expects to reach 15% in 2013 following the acquisition of AGL in July. The upturn in the US and France helped Cupid to more than double revenue from £10m to £22.2m in its new markets segment with Canada, Italy, Spain and Germany also growing. In the established markets of the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland revenue increased from £15.1m to almost £16m. Mr Dobbie believes getting into more niche sectors is one way to keep expanding.He said: "I think there will be further growth in established markets by providing new niche sites and new types of dating services."Another thing I noticed recently is one of the companies in America has a Christian dating site, which has grown very, very rapidly in recent years."Operations in India and Brazil, which increased from £300,000 to £500,000 in the six months to June 30 this year, are expected to reach £1m in revenue in the next 12 to 18 months.Mr Dobbie said the business will continue to look at acquisitions but 95% of its growth is now coming organically.He said: "We are looking actively across a number of our territories at the moment for good domain names."For example, we are changing mature dating into loveagain.com to allow us to expand internationally. "The same thing could happen if we see a company with a stronger domain name but we think we could be better at taking it to market. "We could choose to acquire that business to enhance that business we have already started."The market for our services is global and growing and we are well positioned to take advantage of the numerous opportunities that exist."Cupid averaged 540,000 monthly subscribers in the first half of the year which was a rise on the 410,000 reported for same period in 2011.Profitability is predicted to improve in the second half of 2012, due to lower marketing spending.

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Christian dating inspires Cupid

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