By Russell Adams
Of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Bloomberg LP expects to increase its revenue by 10% in 2010 and
add 1,300 new employees, 100 of them in its news division,
according to people familiar with the company's forecasts.
The revenue gains would come largely from a projected increase
of 12,000 subscriptions to the Bloomberg Professional service,
which provides data, analytics and news geared to
financial-services professionals.
Bloomberg's revenue for last year was estimated at $6.25
billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. Based on
that estimate, the new projections would push revenue to nearly
$6.9 billion this year.
(This story and related background material will be available on
The Wall Street Journal Web site, WSJ.com.)
The outlook, disclosed to employees at a town-hall meeting
Wednesday, suggests that demand for Bloomberg's core product has
picked up after the recession and job losses on Wall Street shrank
the pool of potential subscribers.
In the past couple of years, Bloomberg has been more aggressive
in exploiting its news-gathering assets, part of a broader effort
to diversify. Recent moves have focused on finding more outlets for
its more than 2,000-person news operation, which had served
primarily to offer subscribers a steady diet of news.
Late last year, Bloomberg struck a content-sharing deal with
Washington Post Co.'s (WPO) Washington Post newspaper that involved
distributing business news from Bloomberg on the Post's Web site.
Bloomberg also purchased BusinessWeek magazine from McGraw-Hill
Cos. (MHP).
-By Russell Adams, The Wall Street Journal;
Russell.Adams@wsj.com