Online stock market chat forum HotCopper (ASX:HOT) saw its profits nearly halve as revenue fell 10 per cent in the 2019 half-year.

One of the longest-running and most popular Australian chat forums dedicated to finance, HotCopper was founded as a bulletin board in 1994, emerged online the following year and listed on the ASX in 1999. It boasts over 300,000 members, with more than 67,000 unique visitors a day.

The company released its 2019 half-year report on Thursday morning, which showed profit had fallen 46 per cent to $361,333, down from $666,390, while revenue dipped 10 per cent to $2.2 million.

HotCopper said the lower revenue was due to sales growth of “longer-term, higher value” contracts compared to a previous model focused on lower value contracts, single product and delivery sales.

It also restated its 2018 half-year results, saying both revenue and profit were underestimated by $195,641 and $141,840 respectively, due to uncollected advertising revenue it missed from Adslot, which sells HotCopper advertising inventory to advertisers.

The decreased loss was due to lower revenue, increased employee benefits and commission expenses and share based payments.

The company is internally funded thanks to advertising sales and investor relations services, and has $2.8 million cash in the bank.

Shares were flat at 20c this morning.

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