Yahoo! results and its forecast for current-quarter sales pleased the investors; Yahoo’s shares boost almost 6% in extended trading after the market close. “It was a clean ‘beat’ quarter, you see signs of stabilization, which is very positive.” says Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst at financial services firm Collins Stewart.
As Business Week says, Yahoo, in the midst of a sweeping reorganization and rebranding campaign under CEO Carol Bartz since she joined in January, emphasized that the online advertising market is stabilizing.
In the third quarter, Yahoo earned $186.1 million in net profit, or 13¢ a share. That’s up from 4¢ a year ago. Gross revenue of $1.58 billion was down 12% from a year ago. Net revenue after commissions to advertising partners, a more closely watched metric, was $1.13 billion.
About 5¢ of the profit came from the sale of Yahoo’s stake in China’s Alibaba, but remaining results were still ahead of forecasts. The company was expected to earn 7¢ a share on gross revenues of $1.52 billion, or $1.12 billion after payments to advertising partners.
The problem remains the search engine market, Yahoo! continuing to loose ground to Google. Yahoo said it expects gross revenues of $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion in the fourth quarter. Operating income before depreciation, amortization, and stock-option costs is expected to be between $400 million and $450 million. Both of those are somewhat higher than Wall Street forecasts.
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