DHI Group, the parent company of tech career site Dice.com and several other niche job sites, said this morning it would sell two tech news aggregation and collaboration sites it acquired almost three years ago.
In releasing its 2nd quarter financials, which bettered analysts’ forecasts by a penny a share, the company this morning announced it was selling Slashdot and SourceForge. Referred to jointly as Slashdot Media, the two sites, and a third – the now defunct Freecode — were bought in September 2012 for $20 million. What the company expects to sell them for now wasn’t disclosed.
“While Slashdot Media has an established and solid position in the Open Source community with iconic brands and an incredibly loyal and passionate following of tech professionals, it is no longer a core strategic business for DHI,” company President and CEO Michael Durney said in the financial release.
During a conference call with Wall Street analysts, Durney explained that when the sites were bought the company thought it would be able to leverage their combined millions (6 million by some estimates) of monthly visitors to benefit Dice.com and extend its reach beyond North America.
“However, we have not been able to leverage the user base as we had hoped for the Dice business. And at the same time the potential benefit of the international traffic SourceForge generates is not as material as it once was given our acquisition of the IT Job Board and our success with Open Web.,” Durney said in his opening comments.
Slashdot Media, which at the time of the purchase was on track for a $20 million year, has seen declining traffic and revenue. DHI Group estimated the revenue for the two sites this year at $15 million to $16 million.
Overall, DHI reported 2nd quarter profit of $5.7 million on revenue of $65.8 million. Earnings per share were 11 cents. Analysts were forecasting 10 cents per share on revenue of $64.9 million. Revenues for the six months ended June 30 totaled $129.6 million, an increase of 2% from $127.2 million in the comparable period of 2014.
For the current 3rd quarter, DHI forecasts revenue between $60.5 million and $62 million, excluding Slashdot Media. For the full year, the company is expecting revenue between $244.0 million and $249.0 million.
