Yahoo! not! satisfied! with! Q3!

Sets sail under Panama flag

By Drew Cullen in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Financial News, 17th October 2006 21:32 GMT

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Yahoo! today pumped out its Q3s and promptly said it was "not satisfied" with its performance. $158.5m net income (Q3 05: $253.7m) on $1.121bn net revenues, 20 per cent higher than Q3 '05.

Revenues with traffic acquisition costs - We assume that the commission paid to Overture advertising partners accounts for most of this - was $1.58bn, 19 per cent up on last year.

Yahoo! notes that without the $80m expensed to "stock compensation", net income would have been $235m. But this is playing accounting counterfactuals - the fact is it did expense $80m for options in the quarter.

Yahoo! has already let its investors down gently, warning them last month a slow-down in growth in auto and financial advertising meant that it would come in at the bottom end of its previous revenue guidance of $1.15bn- $1.225bn for the quarter.

The company today announced a $3bn stock buyback program, to run over five years.

And now for a word from Terry Semel, Yahoo! CEO, who says the company is "excited about the roll-out of our new Project Panama advertising platform". Yahoo! needs Panama to claw back some of Google's huge lead in paid search, a market that its subsidiary Overture invented. Semel furnished no details, but it appears to have gone live today: the company has been more forthcoming with Search Engine Watch, which runs through the software here.

The company today bought a rich media advertising technology company called AdInterax. Terms are undisclosed. And it has pumped in some money into a $45m investment round at Right Media, a NY owner of exchange for buying and sell excess online advertising inventory. Yahoo! gets a 20 per cent stake and a seat on the board. ®

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