So on an earlier thread I mentioned starting a kickstarter to buy Slashdot off of Dice. Many of us love the community here and would hate to see it killed off due the the incompetence of some Dice MBAs. I have no idea what a good number to start such a kickstarter at would be so I started by looking at the latest Dice quarterly report. I still haven't found numbers that are particularly helpful but I did come across a few interesting things that might help explain their seemingly inexplicable actions.
From the Operating Segment Results section:
"Corporate & Other segment revenues decreased 9% year-over-year to $4.3 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2013 from the comparable 2012 period, due primarily to the financial results at Slashdot Media."
From the recent Recent Developments section:
"Slashdot Media was acquired to provide content and services that are important to technology professionals in their everyday work lives and to leverage that reach into the global technology community benefiting user engagement on the Dice.com site. The expected benefits have started to be realized at Dice.com. However, advertising revenue has declined over the past year and there is no improvement expected in the future financial performance of Slashdot Media's underlying advertising business. Therefore, $7.2 million of intangible assets and $6.3 million of goodwill related to Slashdot Media were reduced to zero."
It seems they valued the goodwill of us Slashdot users at $13.5 million USD! Unfortunately it looks like they've already written that off?
Also, for Slashdotters who like to Slashdot things:
Investor & Media Contact:
Jennifer Bewley
Vice-President, Investor Relations & Corporate Communications
Dice Holdings, Inc.
212-448-4181
IR@dice.com
Oh, and a couple of their bigwigs will be at a conference in San Francisco in a couple of days:
On Monday, February 10, 2014, Mr. Durney and Mr. Roberts will participate at the Stifel Technology, Internet & Media Conference 2014 to be held in San Francisco. The fireside chat will be held at 2:45 PM Pacific time/5:45 PM Eastern time and will be webcast live from the Company's website.
Maybe a few of us would like to participate in that fireside chat, eh?
Cheers,
Greg