• by Wayne Friedman , March 1, 2022

Nielsen media-measurement competitor Comscore posted its first net-income results in years for the fourth quarter -- up 7% from the same period a year ago.

Compared to the same period in 2020, the media-measurement company had a net loss of $13.2 million.

Comscore has recorded a series of net losses since 2016, after an internal investigation revealed irregular accounting issues between 2014 and 2016 when the company was under Serge Matta, its chief executive officer at the time.

In 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Comscore and Matta for engaging in a fraudulent scheme to overstate revenue by $50 million. Matta was eventually replaced by Bill Livek, who took over as chief executive officer and executive vice chairman of Comscore.

On Monday -- the same day as the company’s fourth-quarter 2021 financial release -- Livek announced his intention to retire and transition to non-executive vice chairman after his successor as CEO is named.

Comscore stock closed on Monday up 1.2% to $2.62.

In recent years, Comscore has been emboldened as many large TV network groups have been looking to establish alternative currencies for national TV measurement that have long been offered by Nielsen. TV marketers are also seeking cross-media metrics, and Comscore has been part of that discussion.

Comscore has been selected as one of WarnerMedia's alternative currency providers for national television and cross-platform measurement. In January of this year, Comscore launched Comscore Everywhere, a single-source unified cross-platform measurement service.

In the current reporting period, Comscore’s more highly watched cash flow measure (EBITDA) -- earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization -- grew 32% to $12.4 million.

While revenue for Comscore was up 7.3% to $96.5 million due to increases in TV, custom solutions, and activation, the company says there was lower syndicated digital revenue.

Although Comscore posted net income in the last four months of 2021, it still recorded q full-year 2021 net loss of $50.0 million -- slightly more than the net loss of $47.9 million in 2020. This is down from a massive $339 million net loss in 2019.

Revenue from ratings and planning inched up 1.7% to $64.7 million; analytics/optimization business grew 21.3% more to $23.4 million; with movie reporting/analytics, growing 19% to $8.5 million.

In March 2021, Comscore secured investment deals from cable and broadband company Charter Communications and Qurate Retail (ecommerce company) and Cerberus Capital Management (loyalty shopper data business).