Internet dating site Cupid Plc said a number of potential suitors have expressed interest in its casual dating sites, such as benaughty.com and flirt.com

June 23, 2013 Leave a comment

Interest hots up for Cupid’s casual dating sites

10:29am EDT

(Reuters) – Internet dating site Cupid Plc said a number of potential suitors have expressed interest in its casual dating sites, such as benaughty.com and flirt.com.

Cupid said last month that it had been approached to sell its casual dating websites and was considering a range of approaches.

Earlier this month, a media report said co-founder Max Polyako was on the verge of bidding 40 million pounds ($61.86 million) for Cupid’s casual dating business.Cupid declined to comment.

The company offers several online dating services depending on whether users are seeking serious relationships or something more casual. It markets to people of different age groups, cultures and social interests, from its mature relationship website loveagain.com to its cheeky girlsdateforfree.com.

Cupid also serves its customers through smartphone applications such as cupid.com, which helps users find other single people at nearby locations.

Active users for Cupid’s services rose 18 percent to 19.2 million in 2012 from the year earlier. Its major markets are the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland, which contribute over half its profit.

The company said on Friday that it expects higher marketing costs to hit the first half. Marketing expenses are the largest cost for Cupid, which has been looking to build a stronger brand identity for its key products and expand in countries such as India and Brazil.

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, for the six months ending June 30 is estimated to be about 2.5 million pounds. Cupid reported adjusted EBITDA of 5.9 million pounds for the same period last year.

Cupid, which faced media allegations earlier this year about the methods it used to encourage people to buy subscriptions, said an independent review of its member database and operating practices was due to be completed by the end of June.

The company said it has also undertaken a separate review by a legal team and implemented several recommendations, including clearer guidelines for customer service staff interactions.

Shares in the company were down 3 percent at 66.8 pence at 0954 GMT on Friday on the London Stock Exchange. They have lost roughly two-thirds of their value so far this year. ($1 = 0.6466 British pounds)

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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