French water-to-media group Vivendi is poised to invest more than £100m in the European-wide growth of internet directory service Scoot.

Oxford-based Scoot, which offers a Yellow Pages-type service, outlined details of the already announced link-up as it reported greater than expected losses.

It also said it was developing a new service which would allow customers to book appointments - such as with a local builder - online.

Scoot chairman Dick Eykel said other crucial factors for the year ahead were the introduction of indirect sales channels and the European joint venture.

In the year to 30 September 1999 the company made a pre-tax loss of £20.6m, compared to a £26.6m loss the previous year.

French connection

Analysts had been anticipating losses of up to £18.2m.

The online booking operations will result from an alliance which will see it investing £4.9m in US firm PointServe.

Scoot said internet use of its services was 325% higher in the last quarter than a year earlier.

It makes money by connecting customers directly with the business they need, ranging from plumbers to financial advisers.

Scoot also released further details of the 50:50 joint venture with Vivendi of France it announced in November, aimed at rolling Scoot's services out across Europe.

The first service to be up and running is expected to be France, by the autumn, where Vivendi will use its telecoms and media interests to promote Scoot's services.

The link-up will see Vivendi taking a 9.8% stake in Scoot.

Recent pick-up

Scoot has also granted Vivendi the right to acquire 10 million more shares at £1.92 per share, exercisable at any point within three months of a Scoot extraordinary shareholder meeting, and a further 23 million at £2.50 per share, exercisable within 15 months of the EGM.

Once the Vivendi stake passes 10%, it will gain a place on the Scoot board. This agreement potentially raises a further £76.7m.

Scoot indicated that its performance had picked up in the three months to December, during which it made a £3.9m loss compared with a £4.8m loss in the first quarter of the previous year.

In the full year, revenue fell 14% to £15.9m, while revenue rose 150% to £4m in the last three months of 1999.

Scoot's share price rose from 143p to 150.5p in morning trading. It has trebled since the start of November.

"The projections they've put together with Vivendi are very bullish," said Meg Geldens, an analyst with Merrill Lynch.

Scoot said it anticipated the joint venture with Vivendi would have about 750,000 subscribers and generate 1.5 million transactions a day in five years time.

The company charges its subscribers a small annual fee to list their businesses on its service, and takes a percentage of the revenue from any online transactions through its service, but the service is free to users.

In addition the company said its UK business will have about 60,000 subscribers by December 2000, growing to around 200,000 by December 2002.