By Mike Verdin BBC News Online business reporter

Ah, the champagne, the hype, the share price which soared 40% in its first hours of trade.

That picture of founders Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox leaning out of the branded taxi - it seemed the world would soon bear Lastminute.com's lurid pink border.

Today's result was so much better than had been expected

Rachel Waring, analyst, Numis

"We think we have the potential to try and build a global brand at Lastminute.com," Ms Lane Fox said as the firm floated at the height of the March 2000 dot.com bubble.

Who cared if the firm was not expected to become profitable until 2004?

Deafening silence

So when, on Friday, the company revealed it had already begun trading in the black, as measured by official as well as more spurious accounting definitions, the response was...

Well, more Babycham than Bubbly.

Javier Marin, internet analyst at Morgan Stanley, the investment bank which handled the flotation, was unavailable for comment.

As was Robin Chabbra, analyst at new economy specialist Evolution Beeson Gregory.

There was no word either from the likes of Lehman Brothers and Commerzbank, whose slimmed down analysis teams have dropped the firm from regular monitoring.

Pleasing figures

If there was a cork to be popped by Lastminute's investor relations department, it was at the decision by Numis Securities to take up covering the firm.

Lastminute has emerged as one of the winners of the dot.com era

Rachel Waring

"We have been monitoring it for about three months," said Numis analyst Rachel Waring.

"And today's result was so much better than had been expected."

Not only to celebrate was the pre-tax profit of �300,000 for the July to September quarter.

There was the full-year underlying earnings figure which, even at a �7m loss, compared with the �11.6m loss the City had expected.

"Lastminute has emerged as one of the winners of the dot.com era," Ms Waring said, quoting its 98% growth in turnover during the year.

Shares rise

Not that the firm is any more a dot.com, if Numis's opinion is to be believed.

Symbolic of Lastminute's development is that it is at Numis being covered by, in Ms Waring, a retail analyst rather than by the bank's technology desk.

And, she says, the firm's advantage over traditional retailers is that its future expansion involves far less investment than that of, say, a Next or Matalan.

There is no need for Lastminute, in entering a new country, to rent and fit expensive High Street shops.

All Lastminute needs is to set up an office and establish its brand.

Or, as it has increasingly done, buy an existing business, with its infrastructure, name and customers, and install the Lastminute technology platform.

With overheads so low "there is only one way margins can go, and that is up", Ms Waring says.

It is little wonder that the firm's shares are among London's best performers this year, rising from 30.25p at the start of 2002 to close at 116.5p on Thursday.

Global expansion

Nonetheless, if judged as a retailer, Lastminute's shares may yet look expensive when rated against those of its peers.

Lastminute has a presence in

Europe: UK, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Netherlands, Spain, Belgium Rest of the world: Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan

And many investors have, after all, already endured large Lastminute losses.

On flotation day, the shares, launched at 380p, touched 550p before sliding to less than 20p in October last year.

Little had investors realised that the firm's takeover of French rival Degriftour in August 2000 had represented not a panic grab for customers and market share, but part of a sustained programme of international expansion.

Mind you, neither had the firm's bosses, judging by a statement by serial executive Allan Leighton two months later, when he was appointed chairman.

"I intend to play an active role in helping [Ms Lane Fox and Mr Hoberman] to establish Lastminute.com as a European scale business," he said

Currently one third of the 12 countries Lastminute is represented in are sited on the other side of the equator.

Favoured by fortune

Indeed, whatever Mr Hoberman may repeat about the robustness of the firm's business model, Luck should also be an entry on the balance sheet.

Significantly, Lastminute came to the market at the height of the dot.com boom, so gaining the maximum amount of cash from its flotation.

Yet it has been able to go on a takeover spree at a time of depressed valuations for tech firms.

It has proved a master of that City adage "sell high, buy low".

And that, after all, is the central tenet of the successful retailer too.