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GROWING E-COMMERCE SALES AT GETTY IMAGES
May 5, 1999 - Getty Images, Inc. today announced financial results
for the first quarter of 1999. Sales for the quarter were $52.2 million up
slightly from the previous quarter which was $50.1 million. These sales were a
38% increase over first quarter 1998 sales.
The reported EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, exchange gains/(losses),
depreciation, amortization, non-recurring integration and restructuring costs,
legal settlement and
extraordinary items) was $9.6 million. This was a 46% increase over the first
quarter 1998 EBITDA.
Digital sales in the quarter, consisting of e-commerce and CD-ROM sales,
amounted to $20.1 million or 39 percent of sales. This compared with 36
percent of sales for the fourth quarter of 1998 and 23 percent of sales for the
first quarter of 1998. Registered web customers on all Getty Images full
e-commerce web sites grew to more than 93,000.
Approximately 25 percent of the sales on the www.tonystone.com web site were to
new customers. E-commerce sales for TSI continue to exceed expectations in
both North America and Europe. E-commerce sales in North America accounted for
15 percent of the total North American sales for the quarter (up from 10 percent
in the 4th quarter of 1998), while UK
e-commerce sales accounted for 6 percent of the brand's total UK sales for the
month of March 1999.
The www.photodisc.com site reported a nearly 80 percent increase in e-commerce
sales over the first quarter of 1998. Sales on the site represented 40 percent
of total sales for the brand. PhotoDisc executed a reseller agreement with
amana, the parent company of Photonica, which gives access and product
endorsement to amana's more than 60,000 licensed stock customers in Japan.
In April of this year, Getty Images made its imagery available to a consumer
audience for the first time as PhotoDisc became the premier provider of
contemporary royalty-free photography to Amazon.com's new electronic
greeting-card site.
Registrations on the www.allsport.com web site are up nearly 20 percent over
the fourth quarter of 1998 and they ended the quarter with more than 1,000
subscribers for its www.allsport.com
web site.
Mark Getty, co-founder and executive chairman says the next step in providing a
more efficient, user-friendly and cost-effective platform for getting Getty
Images customers will be "to launch a hub web site that will allow our
customers to search across all our creative collections in the second half of
the year."
To review the report from the first quarter for comparison purposes go to
Story 204.