Las Vegas-based Remark Media reports strong strides in revenue

By Las Vegas Sun Staff (contact)

Tuesday, May 10, 2016 | 6:16 p.m.

Las Vegas-based media firm Remark Media Inc. increased its net revenue to $14.3 million in the first quarter of 2016, up $13.5 million from the same period a year earlier, which the company attributed to its acquisition of Vegas.com last year.

The Las Vegas ticketing hub, which Remark is trying to turn into a digital media platform, was purchased from The Greenspun Corporation for $15.5 million in cash, stock and options based on future performance, a deal worth up to $38 million total. Brian Greenspun, the Las Vegas Sun’s owner and publisher, is a shareholder in Remark, which owns all of Vegas.com.

In addition to boosting its net revenue, Remark narrowed its net losses in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015. It reported a net loss of about $2.4 million in the first three months of 2016, down from just over $3 million during the same period last year.

“We are off to a strong start in 2016," Kai-Shing Tao, Remark’s CEO and chairman, said in a statement released with the quarterly report. "We made significant progress in executing on growth opportunities within our digital media properties and furthering our foothold with the millennial demographic.”

In addition to Vegas.com, Remark Media owns several other ventures, including bikini.com and Roomlia, a booking app. Near the end of the quarter, the company announced an expanded partnership with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. The two companies plan to work together to enhance KanKan, a Remark mobile application that aggregates and organizes data points from top social media platforms.

“We are doing what we set out to do and we are doing it faster than we expected to be able to do it,” Tao said in an interview.

According to the statement, Remark said it was in “the late stages of evaluating a potential acquisition that we expect can accelerate monetization.”