CMGI's New Ethanol Investment (CMGI)

Shares of CMGI (CMGI-NASDAQ) are trading up 7% pre-market after the company announced yesterday’s investment into Earthanol, Inc.  Earthanol is a developer of waste-to-ethanol production plants based on proven technologies.  CMGI’s portion of the $7.1 million Series A financing was $2 million.

Earthanol plans to use proven, proprietary technologies to convert agricultural and industrial waste products into clean-burning biofuels. The company is currently developing projects based on dairy industry waste and cellulosic biomass materials. Earthanol’s management team has extensive experience in the development and operation of energy projects, including eight biomass-based power projects in North America.  The company believes it can produce ethanol from organic waste far cheaper than corn-based ethanol.

We have already discussed the ongoing process by which CMGI is trying to transform itself ahead of its last earnings.  We even noted last week how the company performed quite well despite what was a horrible stock market.  The company’s main operations are in the supply chain management services operator called ModusLink, but the company is looking to be more active into the alternative energy investments in its @Ventures unit.  We recently requested an interview with CMGI’s CEO to cover some of its @Ventures investments and other goals to see what else is really under the hood there, but the company responded that it is in a quiet period and could not discuss operations at this time.

Jon C. Ogg
March 9, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.