Yee-ha! Profits up at Yahoo!


10 Apr 2003

Portal giant Yahoo! has reported a 47pc net increase in its first quarter revenues, with net revenues totalling US$282.9m, up from US$192m in the same period last year.

The company attributed much of the growth to an increase in online advertising and a rise in revenues for sponsored search services. Marketing services revenues totalled US$190m, up 38pc on the previous year.

“The path of steady execution and growth we established last year continues into 2003 with particular emphasis on product quality, innovation and client service,” said Terry Semel, chairman and CEO, Yahoo! Inc.

“Our results this quarter reflect the strong performance of our marketing services businesses, as well as continued success in providing fee-based services to both individual consumers and businesses. We intend to maintain our focus on providing the best experience on the web, which we believe will lead to increased user engagement and ultimately greater success for our company.”

Yahoo!’s portal fee revenue grew 61pc to US$63.7m, while listings revenues increased 78pc to US$29.2m.

Operating income for the first quarter of 2003 totalled US$55m, compared to an operating loss of US$4.2m in the same period of 2002.

“Steadfast focus on our financial mission to maximise long-term free cash flow has resulted in great progress on our key financial benchmarks of revenue per user and revenue per employee, as demonstrated by our first quarter results. We will continue to focus on these objectives in an effort to achieve strong and growing profitability and to drive sustainable long-term growth,” said Susan Decker, chief financial officer, Yahoo! Inc.

“Given the positive results we saw in the quarter and our current outlook for the remaining nine months, and including the expected contribution from the acquisition of Inktomi, we are upwardly revising our revenue and EBITDA outlook for the full year 2003. We are also introducing a full year free cash flow outlook,” she said.

By John Kennedy