Vimeo revenue hits $160 million in 2018, paying users near one million

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(Reuters) - Online video platform Vimeo's paying subscriber base grew to about 952,000 at the end of 2018 and the company made $160 million in revenue during the year, its parent group IAC revealed on Thursday.

Vimeo's revenue and user figures highlight the rising interest in alternate video platforms which are much smaller than market leader YouTube but are growing by serving a niche customer base.

Vimeo, founded in 2004, caters largely to business customers and professionals who pay anywhere from $84 to $900 a year to upload and use professional tools to edit high-definition videos on its ad-free platform.

Its annual revenue - disclosed for the first time by IAC - is much higher than the $100 million target outlined by IAC Chief Executive Joey Levin to Reuters early last year.

Although Vimeo is expected to report growth in revenue this year, the company is far from profitability as it burns cash on product development as well as aggressive marketing to popularize its brand.

For 2019, IAC projected an adjusted loss before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation of between $35 million and $25 million for Vimeo.

About half of IAC's business is Match Group Inc, the owner of the Tinder dating app and other matchmaking services, which on Wednesday topped Wall Street expectations for quarterly earnings and revenue.

For the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, IAC reported overall revenue of $1.10 billion, up by 16 percent from a year earlier and above Wall Street analysts' average expectation of $1.07 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Net income surged to $191.8 million from $32.8 million a year earlier, benefiting from a more than $120 million pre-tax gain on the sale of Dictionary.com and other small businesses.

(Reporting by Arjun Panchadar and Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar)