Yahoo released its fourth quarter 2008 earnings today. Its non-GAAP EPS came in at $0.17 a share, above the $0.13 consensus. (Yahoo lost $0.22 a share on a GAAP basis due to restructuring and impairment charges). Total revenues came in at $1.8 billion, with net revenues (after what Yahoo pays to network partners) coming in at $1.375 billion.
Overall revenues were down one percent. In comparison, Google’s fourth quarter revenues were up 18 percent. Search revenues on Yahoo’s own sites were up 11 percent in the quarter to $436 million, while display advertising revenues was down 2 percent to $506 million. (See chart below). That is pretty much in line with industry trends. Affiliate, listings, and other marketing revenues were also down.
New CEO Carol Bartz finally addressed some questions on everyone’s mind. Addressing Wall Street analysts on the call, she said preemptively before taking questions:
Did I come to Yahoo to sell the company? No. . . . Am I planning on immediately selling the search business? I did not come here with preconceived notions. It is very easy from the outside to have preconceived notions of what Yahoo should do. Now as an insider and CEO it is my job and responsibility to do what is best for customers, shareholders, and employees.
Later on in the call she reiterated:
This is not a company that needs to be pulled apart for the chickens.
Asked about rumors that Yahoo has been meeting with Microsoft, she replied:
We don’t have comments on press reports that come from nowhere.
That would be a reference to Valleywag.
She is basically signaling to investors that they should let her do her job. Her general message on the call is that outsiders cannot really know what is the best course of action for Yahoo. Fair enough. She has only been on the job for eight days. But she also isn’t communicating where she wants to take the company. What’s the plan, Carol?
She definitely has an attitude.
I think she can really pull something off
Well, it is easy to talk tough … but pity the long suffering shareholders. If Jerry Yang did not talk so tough and sold the company at a good price, the world would have been a much better place for Yahoo workers and shareholders.
Yes and now it is rainbows and butterflies??? Would be a better place with one less company clouding up the market? Yahoo is suffering with a (pre-markdown charges) profit and a bunch of former tax-payers get a got a free taco free and a free bi-weekly check. Yea!!!! Love those drug induced mornings?
Cut the crap… They are doing well and the “new” share holders most likely did not buy to be “owners” of the company (as they told us in HS, Bus School(s), and company orientation, etc).
Go back to the grazing sheep, back you go…
Reality is what it is, all the tough talk only makes you look like a fool when you’re forced to play the hand you’re dealt.
I always read it not as quick decisions, but pro-Microsoft shareholders desperate to get the numbers to move up. Nothing to do with Yahoo, just making Yang a whipping boy for Microsoft’s sloth.
http://kisalt.net/d2
Hey idiot, how about writing your own comments?
@EH You may be replying to an automated spam bot that scraped the site for a comment found yours and left a spam link at the end and posted.
Carol is tough {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/13wovgM69U_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”Carol is tough ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/bFL3qUticb”}}}
the stress of being a multimillionare and making 10’s of millions of dollars no matter which way the company goes must be overwhelming.
As they say, talk is cheap, even if it is tough talk.
Geoserv, you mean cheap like the price of Yahoo stock right now?
How do you define cheap?
It’s trading at a P/E multiple of about 17, how can we say it’s “cheap”? Cash factored in, Apple is trading around a multiple of 10 when I last calculated it (maybe prices prior to most recent financials). How is Yahoo cheap?
The one area where Yahoo can generate a lot of revenue with little effort is by providing serious competition to Google adsense. From the advertiser’s perspective Google’s product is defective, and a lot of the clicks are spam the generate revenues for the spammer and Google at the advertiser’s cost. Google has little incentive to fix this until there’s serious competition. Yahoo can step in and take good chunk of this multi-billion dollar market by doing a better job than google.
That’s the first thing I’d do if I was in Bartz shoes
For some reason, I thought of “I come to bury Caesar, not to mourn him.” when I read that headline.
Somehow… that amuses me.
My first comment on Techcrunch with Facebook connect. I posted about Yahoo on my personal blog at http://furrier....ings-the-facts/
Still listening but funny how you leave out the relevant stats pertaining to the products but concentrate only on the current financials. Like you said, she has only been there for eight days.
What’s her plan? She explained her plan. She’s taking the time to learn, evaluate, and assess before making decisions – long term. Read: BIG PICTURE.
The economy collapsed because this country failed to look at the big picture – why can’t we learn from mistakes, quit rushing for quick decisions, and relax?
hear hear Mona!
I miss your clear thinking (and humor) time for me to spend more time on FF!
why can’t we learn from mistakes, quit rushing for quick decisions, and relax?
I always read it not as quick decisions, but pro-Microsoft shareholders desperate to get the numbers to move up. Nothing to do with Yahoo, just making Yang a whipping boy for Microsoft’s sloth.
As an ex Yahoo of nearly two years (and another year as a contractor…) their problem was always “prioritization” from the inside, looking out.
Their music service, for example…HUGE priority, spent tons of money but then shuttered. Oops.
Shopping (kelkoo?) was a big priority…well, not really. Internally, Yahoo Shopping saw very small investment, despite the company spending tons of money for essentially the domain names in Europe (why Yahoo.co.uk doens’t live on the ccTLD is a whole nother story…I tried to get them to listen, didn’t work).
Carol will have a really hard time with so many diverse assets deciding what the “Yahoo” brand should be, and what the others brands should be…
Google did a far better job at keeping most of the clutter assigned to “house brands” and the core keeping a clear meaning: search.
Yahoo…just means confusion. She’ll need to change that to grow share.
Successful business people take time to plan and then they execute.
” my job and responsibility to do what is best for customers, shareholders, and employees.” – rather than what’s best for Mike Arrington’s stack of Yahoo stock or that money he makes for doing Microsoft’s takeover PR.
Good for her…
Yes, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.
The simple platitudes about how wonderfully focused everyone is internally is a joke. Just call any of your friends at Yahoo and they’ll tell you the place is an asylum right now.
The problem is that Y! is a mish-mash of products, business lines, technologies and managers. Perhaps Carol can “manage” it, but I’m not buying any stock…
Oh no, Peter won’t be investing his $500 in Yahoo stock.
Has anyone ever noticed that the strongest analysis comes from people who not only manage nothing, know nothing about economics, but also are probably less of a ‘power user’ than they think they are.
STFU, loser.
Yahoo!’s Bartz: Search good, complexity bad
http://www.thed...-good-compl.php
The new CEO did say that her prime concern for the company was its complexity.
What ? More complex than reading an AutoCad diagram ?
i think she was referring to Yahoo’s byzantine and bloated middle management. not to the complexity or simplicity of the product line.
Years ago I got invited to the big quarterly meeting of a medical device manufacturer. The CEO was known as a hard-driving son-of-a-gun, and rode his managers hard in these sessions.
The Director of Manufacturing had been on the job 3 days at this particular meeting. After he made his presentation, the CEO glared at him and immediately demanded, “So what’s your *plan*?!!!”
The Director smiled thinly, looked him in the eye and replied, “First week I learn, second week I plan, third week I do.”
That Director shortly successfully turned around a flailing part of the company and was recognized by the CEO as the best manager in the company.
Eric, it might be simple to have a plan for a $4 blog after 8 days on the job. I suggest that it takes a bit longer as the stakes increase.
It TechCrunc stumbles or fails completely, we fanboys will miss a delightful feed of news, rumor, and innuendo. The decisions Carol must take are decidedly more complex and the impact far more reaching.
Building your personal brand on the back of others is better left to Valleywag type publications. Give the CEO some well-deserved breathing room, because right now you sound no better than the Republican minority representation in Congress.
Looks like an awesome hire Yahoo!!! So far she’s been great and understands how MS is trying to screw them over.
I agree. She has the attitude, some time what a good company needs is only new ideas, some new food for thoughs and it can get things rolling again!
I like her attitude. Outsiders like us can just talk and talk.. while she has the tough job of satisfying shareholders, her board, and Wall Street.. not to mention making all her employees happy. Give her time to execute. Let’s see you guys who write on Techcrunch manage a billion dollar company, or even start one. Anyone can talk.
That would be a $7.2bn company
Yup .. she’s got the right attitude to whack the crap out of all analysts and so-called “experts” ..
Maybe, the problem isnt yahoo, but those analysts!! haha!
Search revenues did actually increased well…
Sure. They then cut the shit out of search. Typical Jerry and Sue move. Things going great. Spending money improving search. Let’s reverse course and gut entire groups. Outsource more to contractors and India. Who cares about quality.
Is it me, or is she starting to sound like Ross Perot three appletinis into happy hour? I like all this gumption and moxy n stuff, but not all at once. One sure way NOT to get friggin breathing room is to bark at the polycom about what an ass-kicking maverick you are. She’s got all the bona-fides, but the the barnyard dog debut is some tone-deaf schtick.
Sell sell sell !
After 8 days I would think that she hardly has an idea of where she wants to take the company. Give her time. I think Yahoo will surprise us all.
Let’s go up Yahoo!
Yeaaaah, I’m gonna have to have you come in on Saturday to find that new picture of Yahoo’s CEO. Yeah, OK, thanks.
The tone of what she writes comes off like she’s really insecure and also thinks shes hot shit, if you know what that looks like.
She keeps repeating that she’s the CEO (yeah we got it) and saying she won’t comment on unfounded rumors but then comments on unfounded rumors (selling the search business).
Everyone, in some way, sorta likes yahoo. This shouldn’t be so hard except that it’s a flying spaghetti monster of an unwieldy mess.
Revamp your friggin text ad product and make an analytics program that works better than google’s.
Use a search algorithm that is more democratic like google’s.
Remember that webmasters run the web, not portals or search engines. Cater to them dummies.
Bartz reminds me of Ballmer. Yahoo needed someone like this two years ago – when Microsoft started courting them. But Jerry said no. He was wrong.
They could have had Ballmer and Microsoft’s money and engineering talent. But, they said no. It took them two years for them to realize they were wrong. During which time, they lost search market share and let every major development on the web (YouTube, social networking) pass them by.
They thought they could do all this stuff in house instead of paying for it – and they couldn’t. Jerry thought he could lead – and he didn’t. Sue thought she could be more than a CFO – and she wasn’t.