• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, May 5, 2005

ValueClick reported earnings of $8.7 million, or 10 cents a share--down from last year's $13.4 million, or 16 cents a share, the company said Wednesday. Revenue rose to $51.4 million from $38.7 million a year earlier. Although profits were down, the company still beat the Thomson First Call consensus estimate, which called for an 8-cent profit on sales of $49 million.

Earlier this week, Standard & Poor's Equity Research downgraded the online marketing service provider's shares to "hold," from a "strong buy." Scott H. Kessler, director of information technology research at S&P, said in a research note that growing industry concerns about the acceptability of adware, as well as competition from Google--which announced its entrance into the ad networking space last week--have put ValueClick's future at risk.

"We have grown concerned about some of [ValueClick's] businesses, as we believe that Google is more aggressively and effectively pursuing the sale of display ads on third-party websites," stated the note. Standard & Poor's also lowered its target price for ValueClick to $12 from $17.