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By Jim Hu, 27 June 2003 13:36

NEWS Yahoo! executives have made millions of dollars in the past two months as the company's stock rebounds from the dot-com bust. As Yahoo!'s once-stratospheric stock flirts with a 52-week high, company insiders are cashing in. Throughout April and May, a number of Yahoo! officers sold options for millions of dollars in proceeds. The biggest benefactor, though, may be networking partner SBC Communications, which owns a small stake in the portal company. The sales come as Yahoo!'s stock continues to rebound from the dot-com bust. In January 2000, the company traded for more than $200 (£120) a share, but in the last year, it has dipped as low as $8.94. Now trading at $32 a share after four consecutive quarters of profits and new investor hope, Yahoo! may be regaining some of its lustre as a premium technology stock. That doesn't mean stockholders are holding all their shares in hopes of a sustained rise. SBC, for instance, earlier this month sold a third of its Yahoo! stake for $177m, or about $64m in pre-tax profit. A spokesman for the telecommunications giant, which has a co-branded digital subscriber line (DSL) service with Yahoo!, attributed the sale to periodic tweaking of its investment portfolio and denied a change of heart toward its partner. SBC spokesman Larry Solomon said: "From time to time, we reallocate our investment portfolio." Solomon added that SBC's remaining two per cent stake is currently valued at about $300m. SBC in January 2002 acquired about 17.5 million shares of Yahoo! for $17.13 a share. It filed to sell 6.5 million shares on June 9 for about $27.23 a share. Yahoo! executives have also been quick to sell shares while the market is up. Officers who have sold since April include the company's chief operating officer, Daniel Rosensweig; its chief financial officer, Susan Decker; its chief technical officer, Farzad Nazem; executive vice president Gregory Coleman; secretary Jonathan Sobel; and senior vice presidents Jeffrey Weiner, Toby Coppel, Geoffrey Ralston, Steve Boom and James Brock. Rosensweig, for instance, filed to sell 200,000 shares on 25 April for $5.09m in gross proceeds. However, he ended up selling only 75,000 shares at a cost of $1.1m and made $780,000 in profit. Decker on 17 April filed to sell 100,000 shares for $2.5m in gross proceeds. After paying $924,000 for her options, Decker made $1.58m in profit. One notable exception was chief executive Terry Semel. To date, Semel has not sold any stock, which is his primary form of compensation.