Dailymotion bags another €15 million

[FRANCE] Video sharing site DailyMotion has raised another €15 million in financing, reveals an interview with CEO Cédric Tournay with French business website Capital.fr (translated version). PaidContent followed up with a report in English earlier this morning, and we’ve confirmed the news with Fred Destin of Atlas Venture, an early backer of the company.

Tournay, who joined as CEO just a couple of months ago, tells Capital.fr that the venture recently turned profitable, but that additional investment was required to fund its steep growth. He expects a 50% increase in turnover in 2009 and 2010, and says DailyMotion currently serves 1 billion video views per month.

Tournay also mentions that costs were cut by 20% over the Summer, mainly on the salary side. He added that 25% of the company’s costs is bandwidth and infrastructure, but that they are increasing at a slower rate than the revenues at this point.

Note that PaidContent reached a different conclusion, even though Tournay clearly says turnover is growing more rapidly than operating costs: “Et nous allons bénéficier d’un effet de taille : nos investissements en bande passante, qui représentent 25% de nos frais d’exploitation, augmentent moins rapidement que notre chiffre d’affaires” which translates to “And we will benefit from the size-effect: our bandwidth investments, which represent 25% of our operating costs, are increasing less rapidly than our turnover.”

He says this evolution will have a significant impact on the bottom line by next year, although he also admits that they’re currently not monetizing their vast audience (a self-reported 60 million unique visitors per month) well enough yet: only 10% of videos on the service currently carry advertising.

Questioned about a potential IPO down the road, the company’s chief exec says it’s a possibility but that they’re ‘not there yet’. The startup has been in talks with potential acquirers, he confirms earlier rumors, but adds that the current wish of management and investors is to remain independent and to continue developing new products.

Dailymotion raised the additional €15 million in funding – which brings its total to just south of €40 million or $58.8 million – from its existing investors (Atlas Venture, Partech International, Advent Venture Partners, AGF Private Equity) and a new, undisclosed one. This new investor will be announced in the coming weeks and led this round with support of all previous backers.