A change in reporting options cost Yahoo two cents per share in 1Q06; earnings dropped to $160 million, or $0.11 per share, from $0.13 percent last year. But revenue increased 34 percent to $1.6 billion from $1.1 billion in the same quarter last year. That includes a 25-percent increase in fees revenue to $188 million and marketing services revenue of $1.381 billion. Excluding traffic acquisition costs, revenue was $1.088 billion, up 33 percent from $821 million last year.The Thomson First Call estimate was $0.11.
Earnings release | Financials | Slides | Webcast
Earnings call: The hour-long call had something for everyone — search, international, lots and lots of numbers. Some items that stood out for me:
— Yahoo content: Chairman and CEO Terry Semel offered several examples: Oscar and Grammy sites that doubled in traffic and increased engagement year of year despite a drop in TV ratings; the number-one audience for the Olympics despite the lack of official tie-in or on-air promotion. “You should look to us to apply these same prinicipals within our existing content verticals.” That ability to mesh content with the “largest audience on the web that makes us the programming partner of choice.” While Dow Jones earlier today didn’t mention Yahoo by name, Semel include Dow Jones and WSJ in his list of companies that to sign or extend content deals with Yahoo in the first quarter. Look for more deals along those lines. Later in the call, Semel talked about the change in attitude about video by some seeking deals; in the past four or five months, lots of potential partners were talking about “not doing very much … Now they’re all coming to talk about what they might do.”
— Fees: Slowly but surely Yahoo is increasing its number of “fee relationships.” It ended the quarter with 13.3 million, up about 700,000 from the previous quarter; Yahoo reported 8,900 fee relationships in 1Q05. Average: $3-4 per.
You can download the audio (58 min; 18 Meg) here
Or you can stream it here … click on the arrow:
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