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Monster’s stock price is settling down today after a big bounce Thursday that came on news the company had been upgraded by an analyst for J.P. Morgan.

“While we still expect soft results for the next few quarters, we are becoming increasingly confident in improvements made to Monster’s product offering and competitive positioning, which we believe bodes well for the company as the economy improves,” analyst Monica DiCenso wrote in a note accompanying her upgrade of the stock from neutral to “overweight.”

(In stocks, unlike body mass, an overweight recommendation is good for the company. It means the analyst issuing the recommendation believes the stock price will rise.) keep reading…

Did somebody forget to tell Taleo we’re in a recession?

The Dublin, California-based company has been on a tear this year, tripling its stock price as it declared itself officially on a shopping spree. As if to prove it isn’t just blowing smoke, Taleo, Tuesday, spent $16 million buying its strategic partner Worldwide Compensation Inc., which sells global compensation planning solutions.

The deal was announced in Las Vegas at the annual TaleoWORLD user conference, where the company also unveiled Taleo 10, the newest iteration of its integrated talent management platform. Taleo unabashedly describes its new platform as “the fastest, most social, and mobile talent management system on the planet.”

It’s a major play for Taleo, giving it a product with which it can correctly claim it has an end-to-end solution. keep reading…

Recruitment technology provider Jobvite has garnered a second round of financing, giving it $8.25 million to use for product development and to meet customer growth.

The company announced the Series B funding tonight. The round was led by ATA Ventures, whose co-founder and managing director, Hatch Graham, will join Jobvite’s board of directors. In December 2007 Jobvite received $7.2 million in Series A funding from a group led by CMEA Capital.

Jobvite says it grew its client count by 300 percent in the last year and now counts Accuweather, Mozilla, TiVo, Yelp, and Zappos among its customers.

One reason for Jobvite’s success is its versatility. Not only has the company built a nicely featured ATS, but it took care in the development to include the kind of networking capabilities that recruiters want. The recruiting platform allows for internal collaboration, encouraging employees to make referrals and, to the extent company culture and hiring managers allow, they can participate in the hiring process.

Making this a more active exercise is Jobvite’s behind-the-scenes job matching capability. Employees can choose to connect Jobvite to their Facebook friends,  LinkedIn connections, and Twitter followers. Jobvite analyzes the profiles of those connections and suggests good matches with company openingx to the employee, who can choose to send a “jobvite” invitation to their friend, follower, or 1st degree connection.

Jobvite is an on-demand system with a yearly subscription fee priced for the SMB market and designed to be less demanding of recruiter time.

“This recession is fundamentally changing recruitment, pushing companies to become more cost-effective, innovative, and strategic. Companies are looking to the technology industry to make this possible,” says Dan Finnigan, president and CEO. “Our growth this year proves we’re serving a big need and delivering immediate ROI to our customers. With this new investment, the strong additions made to our team this year, and the on-going advancements in our technology, I’m looking forward to what Jobvite will do for our customers.”

Lawson Software, seller of ERP and human capital acquisition and management software, reported a stellar financial year, more than doubling its 4th quarter net income from 2008 and ending the fiscal year with an $18.9 million net income, about 38 percent over 2008. Fourth quarter profit was $9.8 million. keep reading…

Monster stock is taking a beating today, following the company’s acknowledgment it will be laying off workers in its product and technology group.

Joel Cheesman reported Monday that he received a tip from a Monster worker who claims to have seen a multi-page list of about 200 names, including the tipster’s own.

In response, Monster issued a statement that was short on details, but said, in part, “we continue to restructure, reorganize. This means that roles and skill areas that are no longer needed to support the business are restructured,” says the statement from Kathy O’Reilly, senior manager of media relations at the notoriously tight-lipped company.

The announcement contains no direct confirmation of an impending layoff, nor does it provide any numbers or other specifics. It also has not, so far, been distributed on any of the financial or business services that companies typically use for announcements of this sort. Nevertheless, at lunchtime today the company’s stock was trading just under $10 a share, down almost 7 percent from Monday’s close of $10.68. Meanwhile the market as a whole was down much less, with the Dow off 1.2 percent and the NASDAQ off 1.4 percent.

O’Reilly said she doubted the company would have more to say than what was in the emailed announcement, though she agreed to try to obtain clarification on the reference to the restructuring being in support of “the changing needs of our customers.” We asked what those changing needs are and what the company’s strategic direction is now.

In the first quarter of this year, Monster posted a $10.3 million loss on revenue of $132 million compared to a profit for the same quarter the year before of $22.6 million on revenue of $228.7 million.

A class action suit has been filed against Kenexa alleging the HR technology provider and RPO firm mislead investors in 2007 by not disclosing problems it was having with international sales and with its RPO business.

The action, brought in federal court in Pennsylvania by Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP, claims that between May 8, 2007, when Kenexa issued its first quarter report and Nov. 7th of that year, when the third quarter financial report was released, it “failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company’s true financial condition, business and prospects.”

As a result, the law firm claims that shareholders who bought stock between those dates lost value when on Nov 8th, the day after the third quarter results were announced, the stock plummeted 40 percent, dropping from $27.84 per share to $16.61 per share. That day, 8.4 million shares of the company traded hands. The average volume in the weeks before was around 300,000 shares.

A Kenexa spokesperson could not be reached for comment.

Coughlin Stoia is a 190-lawyer firm with offices across the country that specializes in class action litigation on behalf of investors and consumers.  The firm was lead counsel on behalf of Enron investors, suing banks and others that backed the energy firm. Coughlin Stoia has also played a key role in cases as diverse as an antitrust action against the NASDAQ exchange, settling it for more than $1 billion, and in litigation against tobacco companies.

In the Kenexa case, Coughlin Stoia says in a press release that the company:

“… failed to disclose the following adverse facts, among others: (i) that sales cycles for the Company’s Employment Process Outsourcing (“EPO”) and assessments lines of business were lengthening, causing sales to be pushed out and revenue growth to slow; (ii) that the Company was experiencing problems with its international sales and would need to revamp that sales force; (iii) that the Company was experiencing problems with a significant EPO client such that the client was requesting to be released from its contract with the Company; and (iv) based on the foregoing, defendants lacked a reasonable basis for their positive statements about the Company, its earnings, operations and prospects.”

No specific amount of damages is detailed in the complaint.

Kenexa’s stock was trading at $13.47 at midday today, down 38 cents from Thursday’s close. For 2008 Kenexa reported losing $120.9 million, mostly due to a writedown of company goodwill, which many HR tech and services vendors have been doing. For the first quarter of this year, Kenexa posted a $33.6 million loss, after another goodwill hit of $33.3 million. Not counting the writedown and certain other minor one-time expenses, Kenexa would have had a $3.9 million profit from operations.

Monster’s stock price took a hit this morning after Wachovia Capital Markets downgraded the job board’s securities to an “underperform.”

The stock price dropped 8.7 percent at the opening from Friday’s close of $12.45. It has since recovered and at midday in New York, the last trade price was back to where it was.

However, the comments by analyst John Janedis accompanying the downgrade may have a lingering effect. In downgrading the stock, Janedis bases it on his belief that “the slope of the eventual recovery will be flatter than anticipated.” He doesn’t see much economic steam being built until 2010. Even when hiring does begin to perk, the company’s “future earnings power will be below the last peak due to structural changes in the industry.” The discounting that all the major job boards are offering now will have have a significant impact, Janedis says.

Though the note doesn’t provide details, the structural changes that recruitment advertising is undergoing include the shift to niche job boards, an emphasis on employer career sites with search engine marketing to drive traffic directly to the company site, and a flirtation with social media. Had it not been for the economic collapse, the flirting might now be a full-fledged relationship.

keep reading…

Just days after its former Chief Operating Officer was convicted of stock fraud, Monster Worldwide has agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle charges brought against the company by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC accused the company this morning of filing false statements about the granting of millions of stock options and failing to properly account for their issuance. In the complaint filed in the District Court for Southern District of New York, the SEC alleges “Monster filed false and materially misleading statements concerning the true grant date and exercise price of stock options in its annual, quarterly and current reports, proxy statements and registration statements.”

The complaint was accompanied by a notice of the proposed settlement, which, in addition to the penalty, says Monster must also “consent to the entry of an order permanently enjoining it from violating the antifraud, reporting, recordkeeping and internal controls provisions of the federal securities laws.”

The SEC and the U.S. Attorney’s Office have been investigating Monster and its backdating of stock options granted to senior executives and others in order to make them more valuable. Last week, former Monster COO James Treacy was convicted by a federal jury in New York City of one count of securities fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, file false statements with the SEC, make false statements to auditors, and falsify books and records. He faces up to 25 years on the conviction.

In settling the case Monster is neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing. However, in the press release issued by the SEC, New York Acting Regional Director unambiguously said, “Monster misled investors by failing to report hundreds of millions of dollars of expenses. Backdating stock options made the company look like it had more money than it really did.”

The SEC said it took into account that Monster cooperated with investigators and that the company’s management has changed since the investigation began in 2006.

Four of Monster’s former executives were accused in connection with the backdating investigation. They are the late CEO Andrew McKelvey, General Counsel Myron Olesnyckyj, Controller Anthony Bonica, and Treacy. McKelvey, terminally ill with cancer at the time the charges were filed, was allowed a special deal in which he admitted his guilty, but not prosecuted. Olesnyskyj became a government witness in the case and pleaded guilty to a single charge. The SEC case against Bonica has not been resolved.

Monster’s brief statement on the settlement includes a comment from CEO Sal Iannuzzi who says: “This is an important step in closing an unfortunate chapter in the company’s history and putting the issue firmly behind us. Our current executive team has spent the last two years refocusing Monster on its customers and shareholders, retooling the day-to-day management, and overhauling governance in an effort to adhere to the highest standards.”

Former Monster COO James Treacy faces up to 25 years following his conviction Tuesday on charges he defrauded investors by helping engineer a scheme to backdate stock options granted to employees of the job board company.

A New York City jury took less than four hours to convict the 51-year-old Treacy of one count of securities fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, file false statements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), make false statements to auditors, and falsify books and records. The verdict came in late Tuesday.

Federal prosecutors charged that Treacy and other senior executives systematically backdated options granted between 1997 and 2003, issuing them the closing price of the stock on the day of issue, but making it appear the options had been granted on a day when the stock actually did close at the option price. While a company can legally issue a grant at below market price, federal securities and accounting rules require the company to take the difference as an expense to current earnings and report the actions.

Not only didn’t the company take the charge, prosecutors maintained that Treacy and other executives, including the late Andrew McKelvey, Monster’s founder, former chairman, and CEO, had conspired to hide the backdating. McKelvey resigned from the company in late 2006 rather than cooperate with investigators who were then onto the backdating scheme.

The amount of the backdating was staggering. When Monster finally went back to adjust its financial reports, the charges came to $272 million. In 2001 alone, the adjustments changed Monster’s earnings from $69 million to $3.4 million. Treacy himself was alleged to have profited by more than $24 million from selling stock accrued from backdated options and resulting stock splits and spin-off.

For his defense, Treacy blamed McKelvey and other senior executives for the backdating. His attorneys told jurors Treacy relied on them and on former General Counsel Myron Olesnyckyj to select the dates for valuing the options and to properly account for them.

Terminally ill when he was charged, McKelvey made a deal with prosecutors that required him to admit his guilt. McKelvey died last year. Olesnyckyj also made a deal, pleading guilty to fraud and cooperating in the investigation.

Monster reacted to the jury verdict with a statement saying, “This verdict brings us closer to the end of an unfortunate chapter in the company’s history and putting the issue firmly behind us.”

Treacy will be sentenced Aug. 25th. In addition to prison, he could be fined and required to turn over gains made from the sale of the backdated options.

Kenexa, a leading talent acquisition software provider, reported first quarter revenues today that were close to what analysts had expected, even if they were $9.4 million less than the same period last year.

The company reported revenues of $38.8 million and non-GAAP earnings per share of 14 cents. The per share earnings were in line with analyst estimates, though the Street had been expecting revenue of $39.05 million. keep reading…

Despite a first quarter loss, Monster executives told analysts Thursday the company is in good shape considering the sour global economy and that it is growing in brand strength and market share.

“We are gaining market share,” declared CEO Sal Iannuzzi. “We are declining less than the competition.” Instead of splitting a million dollars among Monster and one or two other job boards, Iannuzzi said employers are spending less but giving it all to Monster.

“Competition is stiff,” he said. Price discounting so steep he called it “stunning,” is common. And though he said Monster won’t “give away the product,” his marching orders to the sales force are “take market share.”

He didn’t mention any other company, but it was unmistakable that he was talking about CareerBuilder and, to a less extent, HotJobs. Neither company reports its financials completely. CareerBuilder is a private company owned by a group of newspaper companies and Microsoft and voluntarily shares its North American revenue. (Those figures weren’t available.) Hotjobs is a division of Yahoo, which does not separately identify the revenue.

In pursuit of share Monster spent $27 million during the first quarter on marketing its redesigned site and its new features. After a five year absence Monster returned as a Super Bowl advertiser this year, and also partnered with the NFL in a fan promotion to hire a “Director of Fandemonium.”

CFO Tim Yates said the $27 million was specifically for the launch of the new Monster site and won’t be repeated again this year. Without that expense and an additional $15 million in such one time expenses as $4.6 million in severance payments and legal expenses of $3 million connected with the stock option backdating affair, Monster would have been in the black for the quarter.

Even so the loss, amounting to $10.3 million or 9 cents a share, beat Wall Street’s estimates of an 11 cent per share loss. It came on revenue of $254 million, Monster’s smallest since the end of 2005.

Monster’s expense cutting over the last several months has been significant, Iannuzzi and Yates reported. Salaries, administrative costs, and office expenses totaled $184.5 million for the quarter compared to the same quarter last year when those expenses amounted to $214.3 million. A big part of that comes from a 400 employee decline in staff.

To further reduce expenses, Yates said the company has eliminated cash bonuses, paying them in stock options, and has halted contributions to employee 401(k) accounts.

During the financial call, the marketing expense and the product launch came in for close questioning, as analysts asked about the effectiveness of the new site features with users and customers. keep reading…

Workstream made it official last night, filing a third quarter report that showed it earned the first profit since it went public in 1999.

The $570,000 net profit wasn’t quite as good as the $780,000 it projected in preliminary numbers last month, but it clearly shows how far the company has come since the bleak months of 2008.

For the same quarter last fiscal year, Workstream reported a loss of $19.7 million. You read that right and we’re reporting the numbers correctly: For the quarter ending Feb. 28, 2008 Workstream lost $19.7 million primarily because of interest liabilities. Even so, its EBITDA, considered by analysts a better comparison of company performance across an industry, was $4.5 million in the red. For the third quarter of 2009, its EBITDA was a positive $1.3 million. (Workstream has an odd fiscal year. It begins June 1 and ends May 31.) keep reading…

Go ahead and cheer. Do a happy dance. Stocks were up today as Wall Street reacted to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s plan to breath life back into the U.S. banking system. keep reading…

Workstream is reporting that it made money last quarter, bucking the recession tide to give the HCM technology and services company its first profit since going public in 1999.

In a statement today, Workstream says it earned $780,000 on revenues of about $5.6 million for the 3rd quarter ending Feb. 28. Its EBITDA of $1.5 million for the quarter is three times what it was for the 4th quarter of 2008. EBITDA, often used to compare the performance of companies in the same industry, is debated as a metric of genuine profitability. But there’s no debating a bottom line operating profit of three-quarters of a million dollars, a stunning reversal considering Workstream’s historic financial performance.

keep reading…

Monster released its financials for 2008 this afternoon and the numbers give mute testimony to the impact of the worldwide recession on the recruitment market.

For the last quarter of 2008 Monster reported revenues of $290.7 million and earnings per share of 24 cents. This is off from last year and below analysts’ expectations, falling at the lower end of Wall Street’s estimates.

The biggest hit came in the company’s North American sales which were off 22.1 percent in the 4th quarter from the same quarter in 2007. For the year, North American sales were off 9.8 percent.

The silver lining, thin as it may be, is that the company managed to eke out a 1.5 percent increase in revenue for the full year, due mostly to a 17.9 percent growth for the year in international sales. However, the recession’s global impact began to be felt in the 4th quarter. International sales were off 14.3 percent, coming in at $122.8 million, just $12.3 million less than the  $135.1  million Monster generated in North America.

However the company’s operating expenses were almost $70 million more in 2008, which made a big dent in the earnings per share for the year. More than of half that – $40 million – is attributed for legal expenses in connection with the lawsuits arising out of the stock options backdating of several years ago.

Monster reported diluted earnings of $1.03 per share in 2008 vs. $1.12 in 2007.

Last year, Monster had $347.8 million in revenue for the 4th quarter and $1.324 billion for all of 2007.

Analysts had been expecting 4th quarter revenue in the range of $279.1 to $331.4 million with the average being $311.6 million. Earnings had been expected in the range of 21 to 33 cents per share with the average being 27 cents.

Monster, like most publicly held companies, reports numbers in a variety of different ways to make it easier for analysts to make comparisons. Numbers used here are from the company’s operations statements.

Monster Worldwide (profile; site) began trading on the New York Stock Exchange today and promptly saw its stock price move up.

Monster previously traded on the NASDAQ. It’s stock price closed at $12.01 a share on that exchange Friday. Today, it ran up almost 10 percent in the first hour of trading, before settling back to $12.81 (a 6.66  percent increase over its Friday close) when this item was posted at 11:45 a.m. ET. (Current price here.)

Monster Chairman and CEO Sal Iannuzzi announced the company’s move to the NYSE during the quarterly financial conference call Oct. 30.

“We believe,” he said, “the New York Stock Exchange is a prestigious platform for Monster, a platform that is committed to integrity in governance, innovation and global growth. These are exciting times for Monster and our move to the New York Stock Exchange is consistent with the goals and strategies and values of the new Monster.”

He also announced during that call, attended by financial analysts, that he would be purchasing $1 million worth of Monster shares and CFO Tim Yates would buy $500,000 worth. Iannuzzi bought 72,000 shares on Nov. 4th at prices ranging from $13.77 to $13.99. Yates bought 36,000 shares that same day at prices ranging from $13.81 to $14.00.

There’s more trouble for Workstream (profile; site), the Canadian-headquartered talent software and services vendor. Already wrestling with an almost certain delisting of its stock because of its low price, Workstream is now appealing a second NASDAQ delisting notice it received because the company has not filed an annual report.

Workstream issued a press release today saying it had appealed the latest delisting order. That gives the company some breathing room while NASDAQ reviews the matter. Workstream could avoid delisting by filing its annual report, Form 10-K, as required by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Workstream is required to file 90 days after the end of its fiscal year on May 31.

Why the report has not been filed was not explained in the press release and company CFO Jay Markell could not be reached.

Company officials reported in July that Workstream’s fourth quarter ended in the black, the first time that has happened in the company’s history as a publicly held corporation. It reported an EBITDA of $516,000 for the fourth quarter ended May 3 compared to an EBITDA of ($4.5 million) for the previous quarter and ($1.3 million) for the fourth quarter last year. Only sketchy numbers were released then, however, with the company explaining there was some sort of analysis underway of its accounting for goodwill.

Nevertheless, delisting is almost inevitable for the company. In November 2007 the company was notified that it would be delisted by the NASDAQ exchange because its stock price had fallen below the $1 a share minimum. The company got an automatic extension to Nov. 17th., but with the stock trading around 16 cents a share for the last few months, Workstream will be dropped by NASDAQ. That will make it difficult for its shareholders to sell their stock. When they do, generally through private transactions, fees will be higher than when the shares are traded through an exchange.

Earlier this year, Workstream was courted by payroll processor Empagio, which made a bid to acquire the company. Though unsolicted, Workstream and its board endorsed the merger, which would have created a new company with Workstream shareholders owning 25 percent. The deal eventually fell through.

Besides its software business, concentrated in on-demand compensation, performance and talent management in its TalentCenter 7.0 released last year, Workstream also owns 6FigureJobs.com and Allen and Associates, a candidate focused career management firm.