Companies: TOT   

Results for the ten months to January showed this fledgling internet service provider achieving sales of £1.15m and pre-tax losses of £1.39m. Although the losses are considerable, the group has actually made good progress over the past three months. In the seven months to October, turnover was only £61,257, which means that the bulk of the sales have actually been secured in the last three months. The surge has a lot to do with the various e-commerce initiatives Totalise has launched from its portal, the most successful of which was its imported car venture. This brought in sales of over £893,000 in its first two months. Another reason for the leap is the rise in the number of subscribers to Totalise's service. By April, a total of 110,000 customers had signed up as users. The group, which also derives revenues from telephone charges, said that the average time users spend at the site had increased to 31 minutes. The results, however, have been overshadowed by the group's involvement with the Chelsea Building Society. Chairman David Bruce confirmed that Totalise had actually offered to merge with Chelsea (which has assets of over £60 billion) although the bid had been rebuffed as 'absurd' by the Chelsea board. Totalise is presently running a campaign to force mutual society to convert to a bank.