by Jason Wilk on July 21, 2009
- Yahoo’s new homepage debuts tomorrow. Two features are worth noting. The first is a tool, called Customizable Content, to decide how “fun” or “serious” you like your news. Pull the slider to the right if you’d prefer not to have American Idol stories taking over the headlines. Pull it all the way to the left, and you can get your daily dose of BS right from Yahoo.
- Yahoo will also add a new type of filtering to searches, letting users break their results down by third party sites like eHow and YouTube on the left sidebar. Not a bad idea, but I generally go to those third party sites directly to search for something since they all offer something unique that I know not to search for on Yahoo.
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by Jason Wilk on April 21, 2009
- Yahoo today reported revenues of $1,580 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2009, a decrease of 13% from the first quarter of 2008. Excluding the impact of currency rate fluctuations, revenues for the first quarter of 2009 would have declined 8 percent from the first quarter of 2008. From the press release:
Marketing services revenues declined 12 percent and fees revenues declined 20 percent. As expected, revenues were reduced by the effects of currency rate fluctuations, the sale of Kelkoo and lower fees revenues from broadband partnerships, voice-over IP services and subscription music offerings. Excluding the effects of these items, revenues would have declined 3 percent. Net income per diluted share in the first quarter of 2009 was $0.08, compared to $0.37 in the first quarter of 2008. Net income for the first quarter of 2008 included a non-cash gain of $401 million, or $0.29 per diluted share, related to Alibaba Group’s initial public offering of Alibaba.com, net of tax. Non-GAAP net income per diluted share in the first quarter of 2009 was $0.15, compared to non-GAAP net income of $0.18 per diluted share in the first quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP net income per diluted share excludes stock-based compensation expense, costs for advisors, restructuring charges, net, and the non-cash gain related to Alibaba.com.
- Highlight for investors: This isn’t the prettiest quarter for Yahoo, but by no means is it time to jump ship. Yahoo is not immune to the ongoing economic downturn, but Bartz is steering the ship in the right direction. She is focusing on cost management; unloading useless properties, laying off and most importantly working on a deal with Microsoft (although not officially disclosed today). The Microsoft deal, could potentially save Yahoo 1.3B a year in revenue, which would have turned this bad quarter upside down. Also, take a look at Yahoo’s balance sheet. It is still strong, and as chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen says “we are continuing to generate free cash flow which provides us with the flexibility to make strategic investments in key talent, platforms, products and infrastructure, even during this economic downturn. We also are making selective adjustments to our spending to accelerate those strategic investments.” I see Yahoo at $20 by the end of the year.
by Jason Wilk on April 21, 2009
- According to BoomTown, Microsoft and Yahoo are now “hot and heavy” in talks about a search and advertising partnership. Yahoo is said to be playing it a bit cooler than Microsoft who is aggressively pursuing opportunities to not take further losses in the search market. Depending on how Yahoo’s numbers look tomorrow, it is unsure if any official news will come out of Yahoo regarding a search deal. Rest assured, if numbers are in the gutter, investors will want to know the reality of the partnership talks, which analysts are claiming would save Yahoo in excess of $1.3B a year.
- Microsoft executives including an M&A and strategy exec, Charles Songhurst, and digital head (and also former Yahoo employee) Qi Lu, have been seen in Silicon Valley recently talking with Yahoo execs. Lu was a top search executive at Yahoo before jumping ship to Microsoft. He is said to be mostly in charge of mediating talks between the two giants. This deal WILL happen in 2009.
by Jason Wilk on April 14, 2009
- Jefferies analyst Youssef Squali ran some of the numbers on Yahoo’s (YHOO) potential search/display ad deal with Microsoft (MSFT) in a report today. His notes from SAI. Keep in mind this is based on a partnership, not an all-out asset swap.
- Outsourcing search infrastructure to Microsoft could save Yahoo $1 billion to $1.3 billion per year.
- A 50/50 revenue share to sell display ads on Microsoft’s sites could bring in $600 million to $800 million in incremental annual revenue for Yahoo. (Assuming the display ad business doesn’t fall off a cliff.)
- So, combined savings/revenue could be $1.6 billion to $2.1 billion per year. (Not bad for a company with $5 billion in annual sales.)
More Microsoft/Yahoo Must-Reads:
by Jason Wilk on April 10, 2009
- According to ATD, this past week Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer are finally talking about search and also advertising partnerships. Sources close to the situation are saying that the deal is likely to happen before the end of the year, however there are no discussions about a renewed acquisition attempt by Microsoft. Bartz is finally beginning what most believe to be is her sole mission at Yahoo, to strike up a deal with Microsoft; a mess that could have been avoided had it not been for Jerry Yang last year. It has been my biggest assumption that Microsoft’s plan for a search re-brand under the name Kumo is being put off until they can co-brand it with Yahoo and launch together. Microsoft has been preparing for a deal since it fell through last year, hiring Qi Lu, a former Yahoo tech star, who is leading all of Microsoft’s online efforts. They have hired numerous other ex-Yahoo employees to help better understand the inner workings of their business.
- And, at another meeting with Wall Street analysts earlier, he went even further:“You all know that I would like to figure out how to pool somehow Microsoft and Yahoo. I’m not talking about doing an acquisition, blah, blah, blah, back to search deals, blah, blah, blah, I don’t know if anything is going to happen. I’ll short-circuit the whole conversation, but the fact of the matter is, these two guys [Microsoft and Yahoo] should somehow figure out how to get together and create more competition for this guy [Google]. And I’m hoping perhaps that that’s a reasonable conversation to have with new management at Yahoo as Carol comes onboard.”
- Yahoo is the No. 2 player in search at the moment, with a much larger share than third-place Microsoft. According to recent surveys, Google has a 63 percent share, while Yahoo has 20.6 percent and Microsoft 8 percent. Yahoo and Microsoft, combined with a new brand would present a much more attractive buy to advertisers. Certainly for investors sake on Yahoo’s behalf, this deal needs to be made.
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