Burnham’s Beat Reports Record Q4 Revenues

Silicon Valley, CA – (BLOGNESS WIRE) – Jan. 11, 2005

Burnham’s Beat today reported record results for its fourth quarter ended December 31, 2005. Revenues for Q4 2005 were $168.64 up 176% compared to $61.08 in Q4 2004 and up 27.3% sequentially vs. Q3 2005. Earnings before expenses, which management believes are the most cynical results we can think of, were also up 176%.

Commenting on the results, Bill Burnham, Chief Blogger of Burnham’s Beat explains “This quarter’s results continue to demonstrate that blogging is a complete waste time. While we did not achieve our previously forecasted results of 100 billion page views and ‘Google-style cash, Baby!’, we remain hopeful that people forgot about those projections. There are several reasons for missing our projections including an outage of our hosting provider in late Q4 which cost us a least $1.00, the continued poor quality of the writing on the site, high oil prices, several deals that slipped to next quarter, and uncertainty created by the war in Iraq. ”

Page views were up 921% in Q4 2005 to 71,772 compared to 7,028 in Q4 2004. However advertising click-through rates declined from 0.78% in Q2 2004 to 0.23% in Q4 2005. In addition, revenue per click fell 56.3% to $0.49/click compared to Q4 2004’s $1.11/click. Commenting on these statistics Burnham added “We continue to believe that page view growth and advertising revenues have been adversely impacted by the switch to “full text” RSS feeds that we implemented in Q3, but we are too lazy to do anything about it. We added an additional search advertising partner in Q4 and were generally disappointed with the results. While revenue per click is higher at this partner, overall click through rates are much lower. In terms of our main advertising ‘partner’ we have seen a clear pattern throughout the year of them reducing the revenue share they pay to their blog-related ‘partners’. Apparently they aren’t making enough money as it is and need to stick it to the little man.”

Revenue per post was $9.92 in Q4 2005 compared to $6.11 in Q4 2004. “Revenue per post indicates that we could pretty much write about paint drying and search engines would still drive enough random traffic to our site to make a few bucks.”

Affiliate fee revenues were $33.91 in Q4 2005 up 963% vs. $3.19 in Q3 2005. Burnham notes “We launched our affiliate fee division in Q1 of 2005. This unit performed poorly until we decided in early Q4 to blatantly pander to affiliate revenues by using sensationalized rhetoric and better placement, a tactic which appears to have worked well.”

Pro-forma expenses were $44.85 up 67% in Q4 2005 vs. Q4 2004 primarily due to switching from the basic $8.95 hosting package on Typepad.com to a $14.95 “advanced user” package which management has yet to really figure out how to use but it would be embarrassing to tell a fellow blogger that they were still using the “basic” package as only newbies do that.

Readers are reminded that Burnham’s Beat’s financial results exclude all labor, connectivity, and capital expenses, all opportunity costs of actually doing something useful, and the considerable goodwill charges that result from constantly antagonizing people by badmouthing their company/industry/personal views. Including these expenses Burnham’s beat would have reported earnings of approximately -$1,000,000,000 but management does not believe that these actual results fairly reflect the alternate reality in which we currently exist.

FORWARD OUTLOOK

Burnham’s Beat is comfortable with its previous guidance of 100 billion page views and ‘Google-Style cash in 20056, Baby!” and hopes that people remain forgetful.

 
Burnham’s Beat and Subsidiaries
Pro-Forma, Pro-Forma Preliminary Restated Unaudited Results

                                                                                                                       

	Q4 2005	Q4 2004
Revenues
Advertising	$134.73	$61.08
Affiliate Fees	$33.91	$0.00
Total Revs	$168.64	$61.08
Expenses
Hosting	$44.85	$26.85
Operating Inc	$123.79	$34.23
Taxes	$43.32	$11.98
Net Income	$80.47	$22.25
Metrics
Page Views	71,772	7,028
Posts	17	10
Ad impress	120,513	7,028
Click-thurs	278	55
Revs/PV	$0.00	$0.01
Revs/Click	$0.49	$1.11
Rev/Post	$9.92	$6.11

P.S. Yes these are the actual numbers.