Highflying Yahoo Posts Strong Quarter
Yahoo Inc., the Internet darling whose stock recently has rocketed, reported unexpectedly strong quarterly results on Wednesday as millions more people visited its popular Web site.
The Santa Clara-based company also announced a 2-for-1 stock split and disclosed that Softbank Holdings Inc. of Japan had paid $250 million to boost its stake in the company to 31%.
Yahoo said it lost $36 million, or 81 cents per diluted share, in the three months ended June 30. That was wider than the loss of $21.6 million, or 50 cents per diluted share, in the comparable year-ago period.
But excluding a one-time charge of $44 million for an acquisition during the period, Yahoo earned $8.1 million, or 15 cents a share--far outperforming analysts’ estimates of 9 cents a share, according to a survey by First Call Inc.
Yahoo’s stock nearly doubled in the last month amid a surge of investor enthusiasm for Internet-related companies. Yahoo sells advertising on its site, which includes a range of features from chat, news and search services.
Yahoo shares fell $4.81 to $186.19 on Nasdaq in regular Wednesday trading, before the earnings were released. But in after-hours trading following the report the stock soared as high as $202, lifting many other Internet-related issues as well.
“Investors are going to be using Yahoo as a barometer for the near-term health of the industry,” said analyst Derek Brown of Volpe Brown Whelan & Co., who rates the stock “neutral.”
On Wednesday, Yahoo said its average daily page views rose to 115 million in June from 95 million in March. A page view is one electronic page of information displayed in response to a user request. Internet companies use page views to measure traffic, or the number of users, on a Web site.
The company also said its registered user base increased to 18 million members from more than 12 million in March.
Last month, Yahoo warned in a federal filing that it expected to report a loss this quarter and for the year after a charge for its $49-million purchase of Viaweb Inc., a closely held company that makes electronic-commerce software to host online stores.
Yahoo plans to start a new service based on Viaweb’s software to set up, design and host Web sites that let people buy and sell goods over the Internet.
