Monster.com (MNST) cuts 800 jobs - a brief look at their operations.

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Monster.com today, in connections with their second quarter earnings, announced that they would be cutting 800 people from their workforce.

"July 30 (Bloomberg) -- Monster Worldwide Inc., the world's largest network of online job-hunting sites, said it will cut 800 jobs, or 15 percent of its staff, after reporting that second-quarter profit fell. The shares rose 6 percent.

Net income slid 28 percent to $28.6 million, or 21 cents a share, from $39.6 million, or 30 cents, a year earlier, the New York-based company said today in a statement. Sales rose 20 percent to $331.1 million, missing the $337 million average estimate of 15 analysts."

Now I haven't used Monster in years, but I was under the impression that it had seriously degraded in quality. Apparently, I'm the only one that feels that way as it hasn't lost much in the way of traffic.



I also thought this was a fairly interesting factoid:

"Job cuts in human resources and finance will eliminate duplication in the U.S. and Europe, Iannuzzi said in an interview. The U.S. sales team will also shrink as Iannuzzi tries to boost the percentage of job ads Monster clients place on the Internet themselves. Monster processes only about 15 percent of ads electronically, he said."

What is it, 1978? Why on earth are most of their ads being placed by workers and not directly by the companies themselves?

A few quick numbers:

800 workers / 15% = 5333 workers.

$170MM / 800 = $212,500 per worker.

Following that formula: 5,333 x $212,500 = $1,133,262,500.00

Gee, something's amiss, seeing as how their total operating expense for Q1 2007 was only $270MM x 4 = $1,083MM.

So how can they save that much per worker?

You can read http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=131001&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1033074&highlight=">more straight from the horses mouth here. (Not the official 10Q or I would've linked to it below).

According to the June 2007 Media Metrix report, Monster.com was the 22nd most hit US website with 25,825,000 unique users. Close competitor Careerbuilder.com came in 30th with 21,723,000 users. Other close competitors that offer other services that weren't broken out of the rankings include #1 Yahoo with a total of 133,093,000 unique users and #28 CRAIGSLIST.ORG with 22,529,000 unique users.

A few interesting things from their first quarter 2007 10Q:

Careers – North America: $184,017

Careers – International: $106,206

Internet Advertising & Fees: $38,805

Total Revenue: $329,028

Revenue at our Internet Advertising & Fees segment increased 19.6%, a much slower growth rate than throughout the periods in 2006. Several factors contributed to the reduced growth of the Internet Advertising & Fees segment, however the main drivers were slower growth in overall users and reduced lead generation volume. Revenue from lead generation approximates 48% of our revenue base and is generated from many sites across our network. During the first quarter of 2007, we experienced a reduced volume of users to our sites, and were unable to deliver a high volume of quality leads to our advertisers. Display advertising approximates 25% of our revenue base and is the other main source of our revenue. Our websites across our network realized a higher ratio of remnant versus brand advertising during the first quarter of 2007, resulting in excess inventory and a lower cost per impression, contributing to our overall slower growth rates. We continue to believe that online advertising represents a significant growth opportunity for us, as our audience is appealing to both brand and remnant advertisers.

It seems that Monster.com has lost their way and are wandering into the "LOTS OF ADS!!!!" as a solution for growth instead of "Let's make our system better for users"

Another quick analysis:

25.8MM unique users per month
$38.8MM revenue per quarter / 3 = $12.93MM per month

So they are making $0.50 per unique user per month. Not too bad!