LOOK: Roadkill or Dinner
Valuation Disparity
LookSmart recently came onto my radar screen while doing some research on Wikia more specifily their search engine. Wikia is said to have picked up some distressed assets from LookSmart. Having not heard that name for a number of years it caused me to dust of some cobwebs and dive in...
After selling FindArticles to CNet for ~20$M LOOK is planning to use the proceeds to buy back shares. Shares that are trading at a measely 1.5X Sales. On the surface this seems way too cheap. When you consider that AdBrite just raised 23$M on what had to be near 100$M valuation - and while not public company I am led to believe AdBrite does about 10$M in revenue annually. (Fact check? Anybody out there know?) Anyway, LOOK looks too cheap. I'll need to dive deeper on this one as operational execution is the biggest concern but LOOK is a new addition to my 'watch list'.
