One of the high flyers in Germany's dotcom time was certainly ciao.com. Raising US $36+ million and burning cash heavily at the beginning it has returned astonishing profits recently:

"Ciao AG, which is headquartered in Munich, was founded in 1999. In six European offices, located in Munich, London, Paris, Madrid, amsterdam, as well as Timisoara (Romania), the company employs 150 people, with 5 people working for it in is US office. In fiscal 2004 the company posted sales of some 18.1 million euros - which amounts to year-on-year growth of approximately 78 percent. In 2004 the company's profits had been about 6.9 million euros."

Ciao.com has now been sold to Greenfield Online a US-based research company. The deal will value ciao.com at US $154 million or 8.5 times its 2004 revenue.

"The US market research specialist Greenfield Online is to take over the Munich-based Ciao AG for a price of 154 million US dollars, to be paid in part in cash and in part by transferring a block of 3,947,367 common Greenfield Online shares. By taking over the German company, which runs the online consumer portal Ciao.com Greenfield hopes, above all, to increase rapidly its European market share. It was expected that the takeover would have positive repercussions in 2005 and beyond on earnings per share figures, an announcement read."

Well done.