Yahoo Earnings Nearly Triple as Sales of Display Ads Surge

Yahoo Earnings Nearly Triple as Sales of Display Ads Surge
Copyright By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/technology/21yahoo.html?th&emc=th


SUNNYVALE, Calif. (AP) — First-quarter earnings for the Internet company Yahoo nearly tripled as its revenue edged up for the first time in more than a year.

The results, released Tuesday, represented the best quarterly performance for Yahoo since it hired Carol A. Bartz as chief executive to engineer a turnaround 15 months ago. The performance reflected an increase in online advertising, the main source of Yahoo’s income. Advertisers have been spending more freely amid signs that the economy has emerged from its worst recession in more than 70 years.

Display advertising, a category that includes online billboards and other visual marketing campaigns, surged 20 percent from last year, the company said.

Yahoo earned $310.2 million, or 22 cents a share, in the January-March quarter. That compared with $117.6 million, or 8 cents a share, a year ago.

The results were bolstered by the recent sale of an e-mail service and the initial payments from Microsoft to cover some of the costs of a search advertising partnership between the companies.

Excluding those one-time gains, Yahoo said it would have earned 15 cents a share. That figure easily topped the average estimate of 9 cents a share among analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

“We had a good quarter, delivering income from operations higher than our outlook,” Ms. Bartz said in a statement.

Revenue was up 1 percent to $1.6 billion. The modest gain represented the first time Yahoo’s quarterly revenue has increased since the third quarter of 2008.

After subtracting commissions paid to its advertising partners, Yahoo’s revenue totaled $1.13 billion — about $40 million below analysts’ estimates.

Yahoo shares fell 0.05 percent on Tuesday to close at $18.38.