The Scottish online family tree operator which relieved ITV (LSE: ITV) of Friends Reunited in 2009 says its annual turnover was 23 percent up in the same year, 2009/10.
Privately-held Brightsolid’s gross profit rose 12 percent though its losses hit £322,000 on an operating basis. It didn’t specify the individual health of Friends Reunited, which it bought for £25 million in order to get the associated Genes Reunited to put alongside its FindMyPast.co.uk, 1911Census.co.uk and ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk.
All of these are up against market-leader Ancestry.co.uk, but they seem to have found an adequate space of their own and have recently been running ad campaigns.
During the year, Brightsolid took two loans totalling £17.5 million from its owner DC Thomson. It’s repaid £5 million, which was loaned to finance its digitsation of the 1911 census, but DC Thomson has converted £12.5 million in to equity.
Brightsolid turned its technology division in to a hosted-services supplier and just won a contract to digitise 40 million archive newspaper pages for the British Library in the next decade.