LOSS-MAKING information company Freepages saw the value of its shares leap after announcing increased Internet business.

The company, which has a base in Oxford, trades as Scoot, an organisation that enables telephone callers or Internet surfers to quickly find retailers or other traders who advertise with it.

The shares rose more than 15 per cent in a single morning after bosses announced a fresh deal designed to bring the company's services to pay-TV subscribers.

The share price hike came despite a warning from the US that Internet hype was pushing shares in the sector too high.

The American warning from chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, Alan Greenspan, was aimed at the US market, but British shares with links to the Internet have also been jumping skywards recently.

Freepages, which owns the Scoot.com Internet site, has unveiled a deal with pay-TV group Flextech.

Flextech runs web sites for each of its pay-TV channels - Bravo, Living, Trouble, and Challenge TV.

Under the deal Freepages will provide databases for each channel's web site containing a listing of businesses tailored to each channel's viewers.

Freepages says that use of its on-line services has jumped by 266 per cent with 24.5m hits on the company's sites in the last three months.

It says that its telephone information service also jumped 65 per cent with 5.6m telephone enquiries. Turnover for the first quarter of its financial year was £5.35m, up 18 per cent on last year.

However Freepages announced operating losses of £2.4m for the quarter, down 52 per cent on the same quarter last year.

Story date: Thursday 04 February

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