Today, QuinStreet announced their fiscal 4th quarter earnings as well as their fiscal year end earnings. The lead generation leader reported a 31% YOY growth in total revenue and a 76% YOY revenue growth in the financial services vertical.

QuinStreet CEO attributed much of the growth to the “flight to quality” in the EDU vertical due to all the regulatory crack down on the vertical.

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It was mentioned on Domain Name Wire that the website and domain name Insurance.com was picked up by QuinStreet a few days ago. This comes a number of months after their recent acquisition of insure.com for $16m. The price of the insurance.com purchase as yet to be disclosed, but according to Yahoo Finance insurnace.com plans on letting go of all 144 employees. We are not sure if those employees will be rehired by QuinStreet.

According to Domain Name Wire the domain is speculated to be one of the most valuable in history, possibly more the sex.com.

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5 years ago the major lead gen players were bank rolling the mortgage vertical by leaps and bounds over any other vertical. EDU was making a strong charge, debt was making a showing and insurance has always been a solid money making vertical, but overall the mortgage was the name of the game. Since then it has taken a huge decline in favor and was in some respects replaced with the EDU vertical.

I have mentioned this before, but we are lucky to work in an industry that is as flexible as the lead generation industry. Depending on how big your ship is you can flip into different verticals fairly easily. When verticals, like mortgage, begin to decline there usually is a counter cyclical vertical, like EDU.

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Quinstreets IPO, with all the industry hype, as fallen slightly from its initial public offering down to $14.59 today.

Many in the finance world have made comments that the IPO market is flat overall and QS could is simply feeling the affects of the flat market. I wonder if investors have a clear understanding of Quinstreet and their business plan. That goes without saying that it’s all documented in their S1 and the now public company will be disclosing information on a regular basis to investors moving forward. Even with that said, I think the confusion will continue to prevail with possible investors. Their level of vertical and service diversification enables stable growth within the company, but it also makes it confusing for the fundamental investor.

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Last week I began noticing a number of Google searches to LeadCritic referencing “Quinstreet IPO” and “QuinStreet Public”. In fact I tweeted a comment 2 days ago to this fact. It is always interesting watching the search terms that are used to get to LeadCritic. Its organic rankings are pretty good for a number of lead gen related keywords and typically preempt press releases and public announcements.

Via Renaissance Capital:

Online marketing company QuinStreet, which delivers measurable traffic results to clients in information-intensive industry verticals, filed on Thursday with the SEC to raise up to $250 million in an initial public offering. The Foster City, CA-based company, which was founded in 1999 and booked $275 million in sales over the last 12 months, plans to list under the symbol QNST. Credit Suisse, BofA Merrill Lynch, and J.P. Morgan are the lead underwriters on the deal, for which pricing terms were not disclosed.

Here is the recently released announcement from QuinStreet.

So things are are starting to add up. The speculations on why they released the income information months ago (found in this post) are now coming true.

Thoughts?

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QuinStreet has been on the website purchasing prowl for a over a year now picking up mortgage, BtoB and now insurance related sites. The most recent acquisition was announced Friday and included the purchase of the domain insure.com and its content for $16m.

That is right $16m.

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It was mentioned today on PaidContent.org that QuinStreet is currently in the middle of acquiring the Internet.com division of WebMediaBrands for $18m. This division includes includes InternetNews.com, DevX, Linux Today, obviously Internet.com and many others.

This is an interesting move by QuinStreet and from an outsider, a little off the beaten path. Over the past few years QuinStreet has been acquiring a number of different websites, but most relating to their core focus of lead generation in the EDU and Mortgage verticals. This most recent move, which has not been approved by the WebMediaBrand shareholders as of yet and is estimated to cost QuinStreet $18 million in cash, will bring tech news to the QuinStreet family of publications.

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According to Joseph Weisenthal at PaidContent.org:

A small deal in the lead-gen space… Quinstreet, an online marketer, has acquired VendorSeek, a lead-gen firm, we have learned. VendorSeek is a B2B lead-gen service targeting such areas as accounting software, payroll services, credit card processing, and other related fields. The company was founded in 2002 by Ken Wisnefski. See this Philadelphiz Biz Journals report (.pdf) for more background on it. We have not learned the deal size.

Quinstreet operates in multiple areas, including lead-gen, and has a reputation for being secretive. We’re told that earlier this year the company acquired SureHits, a vertical ad net for insurance. The LinkedIn profile of SureHits President Jon Kelly confirms the company is now part of Quinstreet.

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There has been a little buzz swarming the industry lately about QuinStreets possible acquisitions.  It came to my attention  a few weeks ago and now has been confirmed by a number of sources that QuinStreet has acquired the mortgage and insurance ad network SureHits. This has yet to be announced publicly by QuinStreet, but according to a few very reliable sources is true.

This acquisition will give them direct access to industry specific inventory as well as 100′s of advertisers that can help monetize their pages. The price of the acquisition has not yet been confirmed, but does look to be a solid business move for QuinStreet.

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There have been a few additions to the Quinstreet team that are worth mentioning. As I have stated in the past I think it is important for lead buyers to watch the movement of employees in the lead industry, especially the sales reps. The reps that have been in the industry for a while tend to choose lead providers that have promise and growth potential. With that said, John Challis formally of LeadPoint, Anolio Reyes and Steven Sears formally of LendingTree have joined the team at Quinstreet.

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Recently there has been a large amount of buzz and news revolving around FHA products and guidelines. Many brokers are beginning to refocus their business and product mix with FHA products. The HUD continues to expand guidelines to be more flexible for borrowers. With all these developments happening many lead buyers are calling for lead providers to accommodate the FHA filters in their products and promote FHA products through their ads. Well it looks as though one company is answering the call.

QuinStreet will be introducing an FHA qualified lead beginning October 2^nd. This is exciting news for a few reasons. One, we have a lead company listening to the demands of their clients and two we have a company that is looking to help brokers put consumers in the best suitable product available.

For so long lead providers simply advertised the lowest possible rate and they still do, it will never go away and that’s okay. I get the feeling that QuinStreet is making the first step towards improving the consumer experience. You may ask, how are they doing that? Well they are simply offering or qualifying consumers and directing them to brokers that can best suit their needs, rather then sending the lead to a option arm cowboy that may put them in a product simply for the large payout.

I don’t have all the details regarding the leads, but you can easily give them a ring to find out more.

To find feed back on QuinStreet leads you can see my opinions and others in the LeadCritic forum. (you may have to register to see the private forum about lead providers) Although, I will tell you now that they are a recommended LeadCritic source and I am in no way compensated for making that statement. Just passing on the good news.

Kudos to QuinStreet.

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