Yahoo!, the largest internet portal, yesterday reported its
third quarter financial results for the year, showing record net
revenues of $295.5 million, slightly above expectations, but also
showing a decline in the number of advertisers on a web site which
is seen by some as the bellwether in the industry, particularly in
its ability to attract advertising revenue.
The revenue figure represented an 89% increase on last year’s
figure for the same period.
Tim Koogle, chairman and CEO of Yahoo! said: "Once again, we
exceeded expectations for financial performance by posting record
revenues, operating profit and cash flow."
The Yahoo! group reported pro forma net income of $81 million
and operating profits increased from $20 million to $67 million.
Yahoo!'s traffic increased to 780 million page views per day on
average during September, compared to an average of 680 million
page views per day in June 2000. Yahoo! Europe's traffic reached 41
million page views per day on average in September.
Yahoo!'s non-U.S. operations, excluding Yahoo! Japan, which is
not a consolidated subsidiary of Yahoo!, represented 16 percent of
total consolidated revenues during the third quarter.
The number of advertisers using Yahoo! fell from 3,675 in the
second quarter to 3,450 because, according to the company, of
recent difficulties among internet companies. Accordingly, Yahoo!
said it did not take advertising from certain financially weak
companies.
Yahoo! added that the value of e-commerce transactions enabled
on its global network “remained solid” at $1 billion during the
third quarter 2000. Analysts are reported as having said that this
shows disappointing growth.
Any potential benefit to the company’s share price from the
results being above expectations is likely to be mitigated by the
evidence of Yahoo!’s slowing growth rate, narrowing margins and
uncertainty over its advertising revenue. The earnings per share
results were only one-cent above forecast results.
