Based in Fort Myers, Florida, Yippy, Inc. (OCTCQX: YIPI) brands itself as “the world’s fastest, family friendly search engine.” This self-censoring site is a boon for parents concerned about their children accessing “morally unacceptable” content and as such has been a darling of Christian websites. The search engine is being embraced by churches, libraries, and schools as well. The Yippy search engine itself is a robust, virtually ad-free interface with the plus of offering a menu bar.
The company has been making strategic acquisitions, the latest being Macte! Labs specifically for its toolbar platfom that bills itself as “the most powerful browser extensions platform in the world with unique abilities to apply monetization solutions such as affiliate commerce, interactive advertising and paid search.”
Management’s main focus is to provide a complete vertical search engine for companies wishing to increase brand awareness via more organic methods. To this end, the company just added two more members to their board whose guidance, industry contacts, and product expertise may provide a big boost to brand awareness and thus the bottom line.
The first board addition is Debbie Sharken who is an expert in direct marketing and digital business. According to her, Yippy is “fulfilling an unmet need in the marketplace by creating custom, vertical consumer search engines for any brand, company or category.” She goes on to say that “Yippy allows brands to maximize their original content over the internet, virtually double their organic online presence and search rankings, and add more value to the brand experience.”
Morton Fink, the second new board addition, is the founding CEO of Warner Home Video. In talking about Yippy, he says that…”[A]s I learned more about the company in my due diligence process, a couple of personal opinions became apparent. First, the company possesses significant intellectual property related to the aggregation and distribution of information over the web. Two, there are certainly competing companies that are going to want these advanced capabilities.”
Taking the liberty of reading between the lines, it’s pretty clear that he regards Yippy as a takeover target. He also notes that because of the creation and acquisition of intellectual property, the company’s “true value is yet to be determined.”
Speaking of value, one can note from its daily chart below that investors are definitely taking an interest. The stock has risen five fold (!) in a little over a month on increasing volume. Its current price of $1.20 is starting to put it outside of the penny stock category. At this level, institutions may begin taking notice. (It’s interesting to note that the stock price has risen as its site traffic has increased according to Alexa traffic stats.)
In short, Yippy distinguishes itself from the rest of the search engine pack by providing a family-friendly search option along with an organic and integrated branding interface between business and consumers.
Risk Level: Speculative
Disclosure: No positions
