Yahoo! profits! derailed! by! restructuring! costs!

New CEO silent on her plans as payouts hit Q2 income

By Brid-Aine Parnell, 18th July 2012

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A hefty restructuring bill has pushed troubled web firm Yahoo!'s second quarter profit down 4 per cent.

The firm announced its results just a day after appointing its latest CEO, ex-Googler Marissa Mayer, the third chief to take the reins in little over a year.

Yahoo! said profit eased down to $226.5m in Q2, slipping from $236.9m a year ago, while revenue was more or less the same. After deducting commissions to affiliates that brought visitors to Yahoo!'s websites, the web firm's net revenue for the period was $1.08bn, matching up to $1.07bn last year. However, restructuring costs of $129m – mainly payouts to axed staff – weighed down the quarter's profits.

Last summer, then-CEO Scott Thompson, who had only been in the saddle for five months after taking over from ousted chief Carol Bartz, had to quit his post after an embarrassing issue with some (possibly unintentional) porky-pies in his CV.

That put Ross Levinsohn in the chair as interim CEO while Yahoo! tried to decide what to do next, and it was rumoured he might stay. However, the firm surprised everyone by appointing Google darling Mayer to the post instead.

The web biz's attempts to revive its flagging fortunes were highlighted in the results announcement: they included Alibaba's partial repurchase of Yahoo!'s stake in it and the quick tidy-up of its pending patent battle with Facebook.

Yahoo! didn't make any predictions for its full-year financials, unsurprising given that Mayer was not on the conference call to investors and has yet to make her plans for the firm known. ®

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