Dobbie increases his stake in Cupid

Monday 11 March 2013

BILL Dobbie, chief executive of internet dating company Cupid, has spent nearly £1 million increasing his stake in the business he co-founded in an apparent effort to restore confidence in its share price.

Mr Dobbie bought 865,000 shares at 114.11p each on Thursday, Cupid disclosed yesterday, days after the Edinburgh-based company posted a 31% rise in pre-tax profit to £9.2m for last year.

The executive, who previously co-founded and floated Scottish data storage firm Iomart, now owns 14.7 million shares, or 17.6%, of the Cupid, whose brands include Be Naughty and Mature Dating.

However, despite his large investment, Cupid’s stock gave up much of the progress it made on Thursday, closing down 2p at 115p, Mr Dobbie said: “Following such a strong set of results, my commitment to, and confidence in the Cupid business remains as strong as ever.“The business is built on solid foundations and we will continue to execute on our growth strategy.“We have, and continue to make significant steps to achieve our objective of one million sub- scribers across 25 markets by 2017 and thereby doubling the size of the company.”Mr Dobbie’s purchase is a fraction of the six million shares he sold at 180p a year ago which netted him £10.8m.At the time the company said the move was a way of bringing more institutional investors on board and came as his co-founder Max Polyakov, who has now left the business, sold an identical stake.The recent pressure on Cupid’s share price has come as it has faced allegations that customers were lured into subscribing to its sites after receiving messages from users who later disappeared.Shares in the firm, which is listed on the junior Alternative Investment Market, plunged by almost one-third in early February as the claims became public.Cupid insists it behaves in a “legal and appropriate manner” and has commissioned an independent audit of its membership base as well as a separate audit of customers’ experiences on its sites.Mr Dobbie has instead blamed the share slump on short-sellers, who bet that a stock will fall, arguing they have a disproportionate impact on a stock as tightly-held as Cupid.Disclosures to regulators show that London-based Ennismore Fund Management and Tremblant Capital of New York have been “shorting” Cupid with net short positions of 0.96% and 3.51% respectively..Cupid, then known as Easydate, listed at 60p in 2010. But after breaching the 250p mark in September 2011, its shares have slumped.Earlier this week Mr Dobbie said it is to develop niche dating sites, where it believes there are opportunities for new brands, after having had success with Mature Dating and seen the success of dating sites targeted at specific groups such as Christians in the United States.After recent international expansion Cupid now generates more revenue in new markets such as the United States and France than it does in does in its established stomping grounds of the UK and Australia.

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Dobbie increases his stake in Cupid

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