By Jim Hu, 10 April 2003 10:33
NEWS Yahoo! has maintained its record of consecutive profit-making quarters - completing a money making twelve months with a results announcement which beat Wall Street expectations. The web portal reported a profit of $46.7m, or eight cents per share, on revenue of $282.9m for the quarter ending 31 March, 2003. That compares with a net loss of $53.6m, or nine cents per share, on sales of $192.7m during the same period last year - it's last loss making quarter. Wall Street analysts expected Yahoo! to report a profit of six cents per share on $273m in revenue. The results mark Yahoo!'s fourth consecutive quarter of profitability and its second consecutive quarter of growth in its online advertising revenue. The performance lends legitimacy to executives' claims that the past year has been a turnaround for the web giant, which suffered a revenue collapse in 2001. Safa Rashtchy, an analyst at US Bancorp Piper Jaffray, said: "I think it's beyond a turnaround at this point. They're now growing margins again." Over the past few quarters, Yahoo! has benefited from lucrative payments from Overture Services, which pays a fee every time someone clicks on links hosted on Yahoo!. In addition to its gains in search, analysts said Yahoo!'s advertising and subscription businesses also did well in the first quarter. These factors helped the company lift its financial outlook again.
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