Cupid shrugs off share drop and BBC

Cupid, the group behind lonely heart websites such as uniformdating.com, posted a 31 per cent rise in profits last year as it wooed 1.8 million new subscribers and revenues rose 51 per cent to £81m.

Shares in Cupid, which fell nearly a third last month, dropped another 4.25p to 132p. But its chief executive, Bill Dobbie, was sanguine about the falls. "We are doing well," he said. "The share price will catch up with that." He expressed frustration with a BBC report that claimed some members had been targeted with fake messages that encouraged them to take out subscriptions. The company denied the claims.