Shares of Irvine’s Local.com Corp., which runs an online search engine for finding local businesses, jumped Wednesday after the company lifted its outlook for the current quarter and the balance of the year.
The stock up closed up more than 11% on a recent market value of $133 million.
For the current quarter, the company said it’s now expecting an adjusted profits of $3.3 million to $3.5 million, up from a prior forecast of $2.6 million to $2.8 million and surpassing Wall Street’s expected $2.7 million in profits.
It’s looking for second-quarter sales of $22.3 million to $22.8 million, up from a previous forecast of $20 million to $21 million and ahead of analysts’ expectation of $20.5 million in sales.
For 2010, the Local.com said it’s expecting revenue of $87 million to $90 million, which would be a 57% rise from 2009’s sales and come in ahead of analysts’ expected $83 million in revenue.
It didn’t give a full-year profit outlook. Analysts, on average are looking for Local.com to see yearly profits of about $11 million.
Local.com’s online search engine directs users to local businesses, an Internet niche that still is growing.
A local search is generally defined as one for a product, service or business coupled with a location—such as “flowers in Irvine.”
Local.com features two fields for searching—one for what a user wants to search for, and one for the desired city.
Users also get search results that include offers from local businesses, reviews, links to local Web sites, maps, driving directions and other features.
