Feb. 5--Unlike many of the nation's retailers that finished the year battered and bruised by the swiftly weakening national economy, Utah's Overstock.com posted a profit for the final quarter of 2008.

The online discount retailer reported it earned $1 million, or 4 cents per share, during the fourth quarter of its 2008 fiscal year. A year ago the company recorded a fourth-quarter loss of $6.4 million, or 27 cents per share.

"We chose not to chase revenues through marketing and heavy promotion," said Patrick Byrne, Overstock.com's chief executive officer. "The result was a profitable quarter for us in what has been one of the most dreadful retail environments in recent history."

Still, the company didn't entirely escape the turmoil.

Although traffic to its well-known Web site during November and December was comparable to the previous year, Byrne noted that consumers didn't buy as much. The result was that fourth-quarter revenue was $256 million, a 13 percent decline from the $295 million in the same quarter of the previous year.

"I'm happy to say that we finished in the black [for the fourth quarter]," Byrne said. "And we're feeling pretty good about the coming year."

The company is expecting a glut of unsold merchandise as companies and stores across the county go out of business or curtail their operations in the coming month. It intends to consolidate its Utah operations at a recently leased 800,000 square-foot warehouse in

Salt Lake City.

And Byrne noted the company also is launching a new "consignment model." It will allow manufacturers and distributors that want to reduce their costs to turn over their slow-moving merchandise to Overstock.com, which will handle the storage, sale and shipment for those companies.

"We have the capacity and the expertise to make this work, and the timing is perfect," Byrne said, adding he expects the new initiative to result in Overstock.com hiring an additional 100 employees in the months ahead. The company currently employs approximately 1,000 Utahns.

Despite the company's 4 cent-per-share fourth-quarter profit -- analysts were expecting Overstock.com to record a loss of 3 cents per share for the period -- one analyst cut its rating on the company's stock from "hold" to "sell."

Analyst Scott Devitt of the Virginia-based Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in a research note issued earlier this week expressed concern the company was beginning to spend aggressively in the midst of the recession.

Byrne noted that despite the "hand wringing" over the economy, Overstock also did better on a fiscal year basis. He pointed out the company's revenue and gross profit were higher in fiscal 2008 than in the previous year, and its loss narrowed.

For all of 2008, Overstock reported a 9 percent increase in revenue from $834 million to $766 million. It recorded a loss of $12.7 million for the year, or 55 cents per share, a 74 percent decrease from 2007's loss of $48 million, or $2.03 per share.

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Overstock.com 2008 fourth-quarter results

Revenue -- $256 million

Net income -- $1 million

Earnings per share -- 4 cents

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