FTD Parent UNTD Q4 and Year-End Earnings Report

[CHR]

I'm a day late on this but wanted to share that the market really, really disliked UNTDs report after the bell on Wednesday. The stock made the list of Top Ten losers today.

I missed the conference call yesterday. Did anyone hear it? Any mention of Groupon?

Bottom line:

FTDs sales were down 1% or so in the 4th quarter and the rest of UNTD (Classmates.com, Juno.com, NetZero.com) fared way worse. The entire report is here.

Classmates.com was rebranded as 'Memory Lane' and now wants old folks like me to pay for looks at their old yearbooks. They killed the classmates.com brand by 1) scamming visitors out of more than $70 million through post-transaction marketing and by 2) emailing folks falsely tellling them a former classmate was looking for them.

After they totally screw up FTD (and they're pretty close), will they rebrand as 'Memory Flowers'?

Comments welcome.

 

[lori042499]

Going down the tubes and fast....Everyone of those companies is failure waiting to happen..Who has dialup anymore, with facebook who needs classmates and once we all use facebook to tell people the dangers of shopping for flowers online, who needs FTD....They better start buying up relevant companies or changing their tune for the ones they have...

 

[BOSS]

Most interesting quote"

By all appearances, Classmates.com is a company that should be triggering plenty of questions among regulators and lawmakers. The U.S. Senate Commerce committee is the most likely body to look into the matter.

As Lori eluded to, and as I have stated, social media is going to be the thing that levels the playing field in many arena's and perhaps most notably in the flower industry. People are connected today, the connections across sites like FaceBook and others are spreading the truth about what companies are doing, and the Fed's are finally paying attention, and I do believe they will do *something* to begin to remove the deceptions being leveled against consumers, and perhaps in short order.

The more florists publicly explain to CONsumers the truth, the more they contact their state Rep's and the more they "Just Say NO", things will get done that will remove those that are removing the profits from the local florist pockets, and take down the companies that have for far too long controlled the flow.

​

 

[anytimeflowers]

All of the above and more. Much more.

Traditional media is busily scouring social media sites, they are going to report on what is "going around". This most definitely includes such biggies as FTD, Groupon, etc because they are so incredibly BIG. It could take somebody hours just to search out and scan mentions of these giants. And most of what they read may not be exactly complimentary.

For FTD, I can only speculate on what they might do, my mind just does not go down devious paths, (although sometimes a trifle deviant). But I can't understand why they went to war on trademark infringement if they don't plan on keeping the brand. Dunno.

I think the picture is much broader. Every person who walked into my store yesterday, and I seriously mean everybody, talked about the huge jump in price for gasoline. Some also mentioned groceries. As more and more families continue to feel pinched and squeezed in a decidedly bad way, and then look at these huge corps with their huge scams, they will revolt. They already are. They will talk about it on their preferred social media site, and the traditional media will "scoop" it and dish it out.

Consumers are much better informed because of social media, yes. As all of us continue to get beaten and battered from all sides; and when I say all of us I reach further than just florists, those who seek to "cheat" or "scam" in any way are going to have a BIG target on their backs.

In the nineties, when everything was A-okay and hunky-dory, there was a lot of apathy toward this type of thing. Crooked dealings were not impacting consumers directly, (or so they thought), so it was something perhaps talked about but certainly not dwelt on.

Reality is setting in, people are learning a different way of living, they have been forced to. That includes pointing fingers at people and corps that are seemingly rolling in the dough through less than stellar means. Not going to go over well when they have to make a choice of going out for dinner or paying their car insurance.

And they will blog, share, and tweet those companies to death. Traditional media will pick it up and put the final nails in.

 

[Mikey the Flower Guy]

it's already "happened" for Classmates.com, it has already placed FTD, on the precipice, and there is a myriad of scams that are now considered "no touches" by consumers, and it's thanks to social media, and the speed at which it condones bad corporate behaviour!!
But, remember this.....YOU TOO are a target now.......

 

[steve]

Mikey you are right we all are targets. But as long as we strive to give great customer service and back up our products that we sell and resolve any issues that may arise we should be the big winners.