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Vizzavi is a joint venture between British mobile phone giant Vodafone and French multinational Vivendi, which made an abortive STG1.3 billion bid for Scoop in September. Under the terms of the deal, Scoot.com will become the preferred directory service of the Vizzavi multi-access portal.
"This first level co-branded service will initially be offered in France and the UK and is thereafter expected to be rolled out across Europe as and when the joint services become available," said a Scoot spokesman.
The two companies expected to work closely together in technology and product development, particularly in respect to a shared roadmap for personal and location-based services, he added.
Vivendi already owns 22.4 percent of Scoot and recently backed the British company's STG178 million purchase of Loot, the free classifieds publisher whose interests include a majority stake in Irish portal site buyandsell.net (http://www.buyandsell.net) through the newspaper Buy & Sell.
Scoot's total revenues for the 12 months to September 30 amounted to STG15.5 million, compared to STG15.4 million for the same period in 1999. Loot was consolidated into the group accounts for just two months and generated STG5.4 million in revenues.
The net loss compared with STG21.1 million in the previous 12 months and Scoot attributes this to price cutting in the UK, where revenue decreased from STG15.4 million in 1999 to STG10.1 million in 2000, and the cost of the European roll-out.
The company's subscriber base reached 30,069 in the fourth quarter of its financial year, up 29 percent on the previous quarter and has since risen a further 36 percent to 40,812 on November 10. Its churn rate fell to 5.9 percent in Quarter Four compared to 8.4 percent in Quarter Three.
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